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
I'll admit upfront that I'm not a fan of user interface eye candy, which in my experience hampers more than helps me to use a handset (specifically, to get to the programs and settings I need to access in as straightforward and speedy a manner as possible), not to mention the incremental processing burden it puts on the CPU and GPU, and the consequent decrease in battery life. I'm one of those folks who immediately reverts any Windows XP or Vista system I build or inherit to the entirety of the 'Classic' interface theme, for example. With that said, I acknowledge that I may be in the minority; that HTC's 'Sense' and Motorola's 'MotoBlur' interfaces are viewed as desirable by the bulk of Android users.
Speaking of 'skins', I had previous experience with the Xperia X10 mini, which employed Sony Ericsson's 'Timescape' homescreen and application UI tweaks. Judging from the above comments, you can probably imagine what I thought of it. And based on my perusal of an Engadget review of the Xperia Play published in late March, I was bracing myself for more of the same (although there was some encouraging news; Engadget indicated that Timescape use was now a user-selectable option, not a default configuration). Yet, when my unit arrived from Anand and I powered it up, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a generic Android homescreen, with no Timescape launch icon to be found anywhere:
Engadget had tested an international version of the Xperia Play, which seemingly includes a different software build than the U.S.-targeted hardware which started showing up a couple of months later. Apparently, I'm not the only one who's loath of 'skins', after all.
The Xperia Play supposedly embeds DLNA capabilities, as a conceptual alternative to having a HDMI output, but I was unsuccessful at wirelessly streaming content from it to my PlayStation 3 (which couldn't find it on the network). It turns out, as a bit of Internet research uncovered, that the initial production firmware didn't enable DLNA capabilities; a recently released update had added DLNA support along with a few other features, such as stereo soundtracks for video and a landscape-orientation home screen display option. However, when I checked for updates within the Xperia Play's settings menu, none was reported as available:
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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>