sony ericsson xperia ‘play’, the first smartphone certified for playstation

officially announced this week at mobile world congress 2011, the sony ericsson xperia ‘play‘ is the first phone designed and certified for integration with sony playstation.

in portrait mode, the device functions as a standard smartphone, running gingerbread (android 2.3) and with a 4″ capacitive touchscreen. beneath, a slide-out gaming control pad includes the classic four playstation icons, two touch pads, a directional pad, and two shoulder buttons, to immediately transform the phone into a mobile gaming system supporting both playstation network and android games.

sony ericsson xperia: play front, profile, and three-quarters view of the unextended phone

the device will come preloaded with ‘crash bandicoot’, along with a few other classic games like ‘tetris’. unfortunately, however, ‘play’ is not backwards compatible with games already purchased from the playstation network.

sony ericsson xperia: play close view of the prototype xperia ‘play’ image courtesy of daily mobile

sony ericsson xperia: play the slide-out gaming control pad includes the classic four playstation icons, two touch pads, a directional pad, and two shoulder buttons image courtesy of daily mobile

additional hardware includes a 5.1-megapixel rear camera and 720-pixel HD video recorder with geo-tagging. while ‘play’ does not include an HDMI port, a docking station for the device can connect to HDMI monitors to provide a larger gaming screen.

the phone is wi-fi, bluetooth, and 3G (HSDPA) -ready, amid the standard google and android software features. ‘play’ reportedly offers up to five and a half hours of game play time, about eight hours of talk time, or over 400 hours of standby time on a single charge.

sony ericsson xperia: play press photo of the phone in use

sony xperia ‘play’ is slated for a US release in april, with a possible european release predicted in march.

aaron duke, product manager of the xperia ‘play’, discusses the phone’s design and specifications

the company’s preview commercial depicts playstation games in play on the phone