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
Already familiar with Sony Ericsson's upgrade software from my previously mentioned X10 mini experiences, my next strategy was to hit up the company's support website. There, I found four different software packages available for download, three of them Windows-based. The PC Companion utility was the one that I'd already used before:
it includes (among other things) firmware upgrade capabilities, as does the seeming functionally redundant Update Service program. Also offered were a multimedia sync program called Media Go, which again seemed redundant with that same feature in PC Companion, and a Mac OS X-tailored functional twin of Media Go called Media Sync.
I tried PC Companion first. After installing it on my Windows Vista Ultimate-based Dell XPS M133 laptop, a tediously long process which also installs a suite of device drivers, I plugged in the Xperia Play (after first ensuring that the handset was not in USB Debugging mode) and all seemed to go well at first:
I was then prompted to change the phone's connection mode:
by first unmounting the phone:
and then switching it in to MTP (media transfer protocol) mode...an option that the phone didn't even offer to me:
The only option that the phone did give me was to remount it, an operation that inevitably led to a connection failure notification, and an encouragement to (fruitlessly) repeat the multi-step attempt:
Internet research suggested that I might have better success if I manually dismounted the phone's microSD card before connecting the Xperia Play to my laptop, but that attempt only led to an endless circle-cursor on the phone's display upon USB tether, until I pulled the plug (manually broke the USB connection).
Sigh. Next step; Update Service:
which also explicitly listed the Xperia Play as a supported handset:
In this case, I needed to first power off the phone, then hold down the Android 'back' button while connecting it to the laptop over USB:
However, after doing so, Update Service reported to me that no firmware updates were available:
Sigh, again. And, as it turns out, the firmware version situation is even worse than I originally thought. Not only was the latest software version unavailable to me, my Xperia Play was still running its original Android v2.3.2 build, whereas handset owners in other geographies had started receiving an Android 2.3.3 upgrade (complete with extensive Facebook integration) in early June. Verizon's qualification of the upgrades is presumably the availability bottleneck here.
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RoninX - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Maybe they should just release a 3G/4G version of the Vita that makes calls.Then you would get by far the best portable gaming experience without having to carry two devices.
SimKill - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
But then battery life would go to the dogs.etobare - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
There you make it sound as if xperia play didn't have access to android non-xperia play optimized games... i concur with much of the review but that may lead to confusionMike1111 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
A gaming smartphone with fewer, more expensive and worse looking games compared to iOS devices? Why even bother. It's a niche market at best. To have a chance in the mainstream market the successor must have PS Vita-like hardware, graphics and kick-ass games. And should Apple ever decide to make an adequate Bluetooth profile available for (analog) gamepads then the dedicated gaming smartphone market is dead anyway.lowlymarine - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I just finished a run of BrowserMark on my Captivate (AT&T Galaxy S) and got a score of over 71,000. Admittedly I'm running at a fairly modest overclock of 1.2 GHz, but unless each one of those 200 MHz are imbued with pure magic, there's no way the likes of the Droid 3 and the Atrix should be doing worse. Similar with Sunspider - my 3193ms result (yes, on 0.9) beats out even the fastest device you've tested. I'm not using Firefox Mobile or something either; this is all with the stock AOSP browser.I'm just curious as to why there's the massive discrepancy in browser performance. My Linpack scores are, while still nearly 3 times what you've got for the SGS (largely attributable to the difference between Gingerbread and Eclair, I'm sure), no where near those of the dual-core powerhouses. I know the second core won't really help them on Sunspider et al., but certainly it shouldn't be hurting them?
Death666Angel - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Are you using other/newer kernels and roms? They usually add nice boosts to those benchmarks by either having better drivers, better optimizations or just fewer active programs. :-)Vepsa - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I considered getting a Xperia Play, but I decided against since I kinda like having more than 512MB of RAM on my phone. The bulk doesn't bother me and nor does the SoC since I have the same one in my Droid Incredible 2. If the phone had had 1GB of RAM & 2GB+ of app storage I would have probably gotten it. The only thing that will get more games made for them is if more are sold since its an open API.StormyParis - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Did someone just receive a new digital camera ? Is there an epidemic of photographic logorrhea I'm not aware of ? Are Ars writers paid a lot more for each picture ? Or is it about the page views ?One could easily cut half the pictures in the article (first page), redo some (you can put 3 phones in a single picture for comparison, yessir....).
This article is giving me a feeling akin to PCmag's infamous "slideshows"
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Fixed :)We have no internal mandates for picture or page count, sometimes it's easier just to string a bunch of images together rather than toss them in a gallery but I've done the latter here at your request :)
Take care,
Anand
StormyParis - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Thanks. Am I the only one bothered when there are so many pics in an article ? because, frankly, the numerous screenshots and charts on the following pages also bother me. With Anandtech's already narrow, heavily paginated format, there's lots of scrolling involved already... I find more than 1 pic/page a pain, except when the pics are *really* needed... which they are not, for example, to report a *one-number* test result. It gets even worse when reading the article on my phone or tablet.Personally, I simply jumped to the conclusion after a few pages. I find the galleries you put in the first coupl of pages the best trade off: really motivated readers can see all the pictures, the rest of us can read the article without kilometers of scrolling. <ripoff source="Arrested Development ">It's a nice way to satisfy the "buy" crowd and the "curious" crowd, and we're all buy/curious </ripoff>