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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name99 - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
"Yes, the silver trim is plastic, not metal, ... and minimized the potential for interference-induced antenna sensitivity degradation"Do we know that this is ACTUALLY true? Or is this high school EM applied completely inappropriately?
Obviously it is true that have metal parts in a phone affects the antenna. It's just as true that
- most phones (from a whole range of manufacturers) ship with large chunks of metal in them
- Apple's portables (those with which I am most familiar) went through a phase some years ago where the plastic MacBooks had better reception than the metal MacBook pros, but that hasn't been the case for a while. And the limited knowledge I have of Win portables (or various tablets) doesn't have people all stating unanimously "buy xxx [with a plastic cover] because its radio reception is so much better than yyy [covered with magnesium or titanium or aluminum or whatever]".
I don't have a strong opinion about this either way, but it seems to me, based on behavior across a range of manufacturers that the true state of affairs is
- if you're an amateur then using plastic is probably best because you can just ignore it BUT
- if you're a professional (and pretty much every company of interest IS now professional] you just model the entire environment (metals plus dielectrics) as finite elements. optimize the antenna for that environment, and things works out as well as they realistically can.
[And, OMG, please, if you're a commenter who feels the need to pipe up about "antenna-gate" and "grips of death", ask yourself before you comment:
- does my comment add anything useful to the question that has been posed? AND
- does my comment make me look like a retarded 14yr old with poor impulse control?]
medi01 - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
I worked in EM field, and what you state is utter nonsense.You can repeat "I'm a professional, very professional, superprofessional" all day long, with "it's magical, it's very very magical" on top of it, but it still won't help you to get EM waves through the metal.
Surrept - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Is this the Brian Klug that was once bitten by a fox. It only makes sense he is on the staff here. Smartest person i've ever met in the field of computers.