Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

After its official announcement last night, we've managed to get our hands on one of the most anticipated handsets in recent times, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. The PlayStation phone in all but name, it's a touchscreen Android smartphone equipped with a slideout gamepad that packs in a total of 14 physical controls for providing an easy gaming interface. The concept seems sound enough but how does it work in real life? Read on to find out. 

First impressions of the Xperia Play are mixed: the design looks smart enough and it feels quite solid with a firm metal sliding action. However, the predominance of shiny plastic doesn't quite have the premium feel of some handsets and really does show off fingerprints with aplomb. It's also rather chunky, though no more than you would expect give it's a slider and includes shoulder buttons.

Otherwise the device gives up little to its competitors (dual-core superphones aside). The 4in, 854 x 480 pixel, LCD screen uses the same panel technology as the Xperia Arc, making it really bright, colourful, sharp and very viewing angle friendly. it also feels responsive and of course has multi-touch with all the usual gestures present.

Inside is a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which as we say is not quite on the level of these new dual-core phones but combined with 512MB of RAM and the speed improvements of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, it feels very fast. Moving round the interface, switching between apps, zooming in and out of the web browser, all felt nice and snappy.

There's a 5-megapixel camera on the back with an LED flash, though with all the gaming buttons, Sony Ericsson has omitted a button for the shutter. Elsewhere you've got a headphone jack on the left edge - somewhat annoying as it will mean headphone cables get snagged in pockets - along with a microUSB socket, while the right is home to the left and right shoulder buttons and inbetween them is a volume rocker.

This image is of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo showing the same interface changes,

Thankfully Sony Ericsson hasn't tweaked the Android interface too much, though it has made a few subtle and worthwhile changes. Open the App Launcher and tap the icon in the bottom left and you can then select in what order the apps are shown - one of your choice, alphabetic, recently installed or most used. Pick your own choice and tap another icon and you can then move the icons around as you please.

Timescape, the company's social network integration, is also included with Facebook, Twitter and the like included in contact information and messaging apps. Otherwise, you're looking at a fairly typical modern Android handset. 

So, of course, what sets the Play apart form other phones is its hardware game controls, and we must admit to being very impressed. As well as the two shoulder buttons, there's a D-pad on the left and your classic Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square (TCCS) buttons on the right. These all have surprising amounts of travel and a defined action, giving you a more than adequate amount of feedback. The shoulder buttons sit perfectly under your forefingers when holding in gaming mode but are a little cramped to be truly comfortable. Below and to the right are small buttons for Start and Select, and a similarly sized one for opening the context menu sits on the left. These are fiddly to press, but they're not used mid game so it's fine.

In between the conventional controls are the optical analogue sticks. We didn't actually give these much of a going over (as we got a bit carried away playing using the normal buttons and ran out of time) but what we could tell was that things would get rather precarious if you were trying to use those as well as the shoulder buttons and the TCCS buttons - a scenario best left to when you're sitting comfortably, not on a busy train or such like.

The games themselves are tweaked versions of your fairly typical high-end Android, but with support for the gaming buttons. We tried Asphalt Adrenaline 6, a racing game, as well as Star Battalion, a spaceship shooter. Both looked graphically quite impressive and played very smoothly but more importantly were great fun thanks to the far more intuitive and accurate method of controlling the game with buttons rather than tilting the phone back and forth and using onscreen controls.

Obviously it will be the A titles like Assassin’s Creed and Dead Space (there will be 50 titles at launch) that will really make this platform a proper gaming device, but even for more casual games the physical controls do make for a far more enjoyable experience.

Perfect, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play most certainly isn't then, with its single core CPU and plasticky build, but the concept is sound and is quite well executed. All told, we're rather excited for its arrival. Are you? Let us know in the comments.