Verizon Wireless
The Sony PlayStation phone, aka the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.
By Suzanne Choney
The long-awaited PlayStation phone will be sold by Verizon Wireless, with pre-orders taken starting May 19, and the phone available in stores May 26.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the phone’s official name, and it costs $ 199.99 with a two-year service agreement. The phone, with a 4-inch, multi-touch display, uses the Android operating system, and version 2.3, also known as “Gingerbread,” at that. The phone will come preloaded with seven games: “Madden NFL 11,” “Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior,” “Asphalt 6: Adrenaline,” “The Sims 3,” “Star Battalion,” “Crash Bandicoot” and “Tetris.”
“Customers can expand their video game library with more than 50 game titles available at launch for download via V CAST Apps,” Verizon Wireless said in a press release. “Customers easily become gamers with the slide out game pad revealing a directional keypad, dual analog touch joystick, two shoulder buttons and the four iconic PlayStation symbol keys: circle, X, square and triangle.”
The Xperia Play’s spec’s include:
- 1 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon® II processor with Adreno 205 GPU
- 5-megapixel rear-facing camera
- VGA front-facing camera for still shots and video chatting
- Adobe Flash Player
- Mobile hotspot capability, sharing a 3G connection with up to five Wi-Fi devices.
- Support for Google Mobile Services, including Google Maps, Gmail, Google Talk and access to the Android Market, which now has more than 200,000 apps.
You can learn more at Sony Ericsson’s website.
There is some additional good news: Despite the security breach that affected Sony’s online PlayStation Network and put it out of commission for almost a month, Sony said recently that the Xperia Play is not affected.
“Sony and Sony Ericsson data reside on different servers,” a Sony Ericsson spokesman told Reuters recently. Still, the security breach may hurt the phone’s potential sales.
“Sony’s PlayStation fiasco will be both an opportunity and a threat for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play,” analyst Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics told the news service. “It is a threat because a wave of negative headlines is tarnishing the valuable PlayStation brand.”
Related stories:
- Sony’s PlayStation phone is for real
- Super Bowl ad reveals Sony’s gaming smartphone
- PlayStation phone may be out by spring
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