We've spent extensive time with our prototype Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, but how's it feel to use the real thing? Quite a bit better, actually. The phone looks identical, to be sure, but the hinge feels much sturdier. The speaker quality has gone up, too, although in the crowded room it was much too noisy to really make a solid judgment call. The UI was snappier and the customizations obviously a lot more complete, but really, our biggest concern was the games. We got to play two titles, Star Battalion and FIFA. We found both in the applications pane, as there was nary a sign of the PlayStation Suite or PS Store on this demo unit. All in all, the former title feels a bit like a StarFox ripoff, but importantly, the main control schemes (both gamepad and optional accelerometer) were supported and worked quite well. The trackpads didn't work in Star Battalion, but when we swapped over to FIFA, we found they performed there -- the left "pad" was used for moving the player, and though effective, it wasn't always smooth moving our thumbs about, and we very much doubt we'd be able to tell "how far" in any direction our thumbs were at any given time. We'll need more time (and a larger variety of games) to really get a feel for the trackpads. Both titles took quite a while to load, crashing a few times in the process, but were fine once we'd get to the main menus -- we're really hoping that's just non-final software, but we'll find out in about a month's time, eh? We'll have video in a sec; meanwhile, find hands-on pictures of the phone (and dock!) in the gallery below!
Xperia Play final hardware hands-on!
