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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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.