Remember the PlayStation Phone Sony so painfully failed to announce at this year's CES? Well, apparently it's real and Engadget has one. The tech blog posted an in-depth hands-on preview earlier today, complete with detailed hardware impressions and a brief look at games running on the device, which they say will be officially called the Xperia Play.
While the look of the device is consistent with what we've seen already, Engadget's preview did yield some interesting new information, like, for instance, that Sony may call their new mobile gaming platform PlayStation Pocket.
Though currently devoid of any content, the PlayStation Pocket feature is believed to be a games manager for specialized games made specifically for the device. When played with existing emulators and games for the Android platform, however, the controls and graphics processing were apparently responsive and free of any graphical hiccups, like framerate drops or crashes.
As for the device itself, Engadget notes that the buttons are shallower than the PSPgo, as are the shoulder buttons, but the build quality is allegedly better.
The preview also echoed previous reports regarding the phone's standard smartphone features as well, like that it will be based on Android 2.3 'Gingerbread', and sport a 1.2GHz MSM8655 processor and an Adreno 205 GPU with 512MBs of RAM. Benchmarks reportedly topped 59fps using Neocore tests, which bodes well for its graphical performance. The rear-facing camera also apparently takes some pretty gorgeous photos, though the current build used by Engadget wouldn't support 720p HD video recording.
Of course, Engadget did caution readers that the device used is still considered a prototype, and the features are subject to change, but given the seemingly finalized nature of the product, significant changes are unlikely.
We're hoping to hear more about the PlayStation Phone next month at the Mobile World Congress. For more on the PlayStation Phone aka Xperia Play, stay tuned to IGN.com.
http://gear.ign.com/articles/114/1146203p1.html
While the look of the device is consistent with what we've seen already, Engadget's preview did yield some interesting new information, like, for instance, that Sony may call their new mobile gaming platform PlayStation Pocket.
Though currently devoid of any content, the PlayStation Pocket feature is believed to be a games manager for specialized games made specifically for the device. When played with existing emulators and games for the Android platform, however, the controls and graphics processing were apparently responsive and free of any graphical hiccups, like framerate drops or crashes.
As for the device itself, Engadget notes that the buttons are shallower than the PSPgo, as are the shoulder buttons, but the build quality is allegedly better.
The preview also echoed previous reports regarding the phone's standard smartphone features as well, like that it will be based on Android 2.3 'Gingerbread', and sport a 1.2GHz MSM8655 processor and an Adreno 205 GPU with 512MBs of RAM. Benchmarks reportedly topped 59fps using Neocore tests, which bodes well for its graphical performance. The rear-facing camera also apparently takes some pretty gorgeous photos, though the current build used by Engadget wouldn't support 720p HD video recording.
Of course, Engadget did caution readers that the device used is still considered a prototype, and the features are subject to change, but given the seemingly finalized nature of the product, significant changes are unlikely.
We're hoping to hear more about the PlayStation Phone next month at the Mobile World Congress. For more on the PlayStation Phone aka Xperia Play, stay tuned to IGN.com.
http://gear.ign.com/articles/114/1146203p1.html
