The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play: Where Do You Want To Take Your Gaming Today?
by Brian Dipert on August 8, 2011 1:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Sony
- Android
- Xperia Play
- Mobile
The Xperia Play embeds a single rear-mounted 5.1 Mpixel image sensor alongside a LED flash. There's no dual-sensor rear array, as in the HTC EVO 3D or LG Optimus 3D, although Sony Ericsson included a VGA resolution (640x48 pixel, aka 0.3 Mpixel) front-mounted camera for video chat purposes. The Xperia Play captured passable rear-mount camera snapshots even in low ambient illumination environments, although it doesn't come close to offering the brightest LED supplemental illumination that I've encountered.
Still imaging acceptability was unfortunately coupled with video imaging downsides. For unknown reasons (though I suspect a combination of battery life concerns and CPU performance limitations), the Xperia Play's captured per-frame video resolution is only 800 x 480 pixels (aka widescreen standard definition). I'm profoundly baffled by this shortcoming; my Nexus One contains prior-generation iterations of both the CPU and GPU, yet manages 720p video capture (albeit, admittedly, via a CyanogenMod-delivered hack), as does the silicon-comparable iPhone 4 even in an unjailbroken state. Plus, I personally found the resultant video to be even softer than SD resolution capture would normally deliver, along with a sub-par soundtrack that may be in part a reflection of the non-optimal microphone location.
Anand tested both power consumption and display attributes prior to shipping the Xperia Play to me, so the data that follows comes straight from him. Here's the comparative battery life of the Xperia Play versus other handsets AnandTech has tested, when web browsing both over EV-DO:
and over Wi-Fi:
And here's the 'talk time' battery life comparison:
Anand then measured the Xperia Play's display brightness and contrasted it (pun intended) with other mobile phones:
The default display intensity is a bit dim, perhaps reflecting a decision made by Sony Ericsson to stretch the between-charges usage, but the display acquits itself well versus other gear I've handled in the past once you bump up the setting a notch or few. Its viewing angle is also passable albeit not stellar, and it's much easier to see in daylight than is an OLED alternative. And if you do the math on its atypical 854 x 480 pixel resolution, you'll see that not only does it notably exceed that of the PlayStation Portable (480 x 242 pixels), it also works out to be an exact (to within a few decimal places) 16:9 ratio. This means no cropping, no black bars, and no squishing-or-stretching distortion when watching widescreen movies.
Apologies, by the way, for the lack of a display black level brightness measurement, therefore the associated absence of a contrast metric. Anand had mistakenly thought the Xperia Play had an AMOLED screen (it's a LED-backlit LCD), therefore only took a white level brightness measurement before sending the handset to me, and I don't currently own a colorimeter.
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The0ne - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
One of my duty as an Engineer is to write for others be it technical people or non technical; I write a lot to be honest. But I do spend quite a bit of time choosing and modifying any graphics (charts included) to ensure they are essential in any document. Randomly using graphics is generally not a very good idea. The only reason I know of is to cater to people who love to have tons of graphic and who love to stare at them all day long. Thankfully, I don't care much about these type of people until they pay me or the company to do so, I guess :) hahahaI'll take an Anandtech review over any Dailytech "news" article. Now, those are just poorly written, especially by Jason Mick who seem to think the audience is a bunch of kids and resort to the numbering type news reporting.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Let's try this again :)Take care,
Anand
vshah - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Are you confusing the two? you mention it has 512mb of RAM, and that when that drops, the phone complains about free space being low. I think you meant ROM, as android will almost never complain about RAM, it will just kill stuff in the background to free up more.vshah - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
also, the large game installs would go to the 1 gig of flash storage, not the 512mb of RAMbdipert - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Great point, vshah, I did indeed intermingle RAM and ROM (aka local flash memory storage) observations. I'll go update the writeup now. Thank you!snajk - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
I'll probably get one of these, not for the branded games but for using emulators. My current android works ok at this, but the controls are a pain to use even though I have a phone with a "D-pad". Why settle for a few old ps1 titles when you have all the old nes/snes/genesis/neogeo/mame games to choose from?eallan - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
My main device is a GS2, but i also have one of these.They are absolutely perfect for emulation.
So many super nintendo games, genesis games, even PSX games and N64. I'm pretty sure thats the best use of this phone.
The dpad and buttons are truly excellent.
BaCh - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Dear Mr. Anand, you should have spared a few words for its exceptional audio quality, as testified by both Gsmarena and Phonearena.PC_Jones - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
The main reason for me getting a Play was so I wouldn't have to tote around a Wiimote if I ever wanted to play any SNES games on my phone with any accuracy. I'm surprised that the use of emulators wasn't discussed more in this article.The0ne - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
I'm a retrogamer by heart. The problem with emulation is that most people don't own the games/roms they are using. I'm sorry, this is just the sad case. Retrogamers like myself, and even more hardcore, have games that we do own and setups to be able to play them with nostalgia.And while I would love to see a discussion about emulation on any platform it quickly becomes more of a "pirated" scene than anything. I collect classic games, it's sad for me to see people pirating them because they can.