Is The Xperia Play Worth Buying?



Theres been a lot of buzz around the much-anticipated PlayStation smartphone, the Xperia Play. Is it as good as people have hoped? We take a look at it. Generally, this is a pretty good phone with excellent viewing angles and an all-round good color performance that displays deep, bold colors. One area that does let it down slightly is its bulk. While it wears it well and it was perhaps inevitable as a gaming phone that it would weigh a bit, it is noticeable when youre using it.

The hardware of the phone is pretty good. Most of the front of it is taken up by the screen, which means its fairly sparse. As with most Android phones, it boasts the tried and tested feature of 4 keys to control the main functions, which is good. However, when youre trying to watch a movie on the phone, the headphone port near the top gets in the way. Also on the negative side, the power button is in a fiddly location. Hopefully future models will fix this.

The Xperia Play also benefits from the most up-to-date technology there is, but its performance is sadly a little lacking. It currently has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which isnt bad but a dual-core chipset powering it would be better. Its also a little odd for a specialized gaming phone that, at its launch, the Xperia Play is not as sophisticated in its gaming capabilities as the iPhone 4. This is because the range of games compatible with it is currently fairly limited.

In terms of the gaming itself, this is largely operated by dual touchpads in the centre of the device. These arent bad but cant make up for the lack of a joystick. Its also hard to use the phone properly when the gaming controls are open, but these controls serve their purpose well. The plastic control keys are robust and there is good control over the cursor when entering text. A slight foible is that the home screen doesnt perform the same as other menus when using the phone horizontally.

The Xperia Play also has good software overall. In particular, the pinch widgets view, which allows you to see all of your open applications simultaneously is a very good feature although the social media update display is slightly weak. The music player is simple yet sophisticated and the phone has good video and voice quality as well as an intuitive messaging keyboard. In conclusion, wed hope the phones issues will be ironed out by later models as it has very good potential.

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