Sony's PlayStation Phone finally gets Xperia, PlayStation logos

Engagdet: These appear to be new hardware builds that feature refined touch surfaces -- notice the engraved circles -- along with PlayStation-themed and Xperia logos at the bottom.

[Snake-eater]

is they can get the price range right, this could be worth buying

[GodsHand]

And what price is that? Based on the previous incarnations from Sony, they never bring a product out with suitable price range, it is always over priced for most consumers to cope with.

I myself will wait for the final product, and a few years later for a price drop.

[WhittO]

It's not price for me it is battery.

What is the point in adding all of this to a phone, when the battery will barely even last for 3 hours of gaming, leaving you without a phone to use for the day?

Currently, a "standard" smartphone game (like Angry Birds etc) will drain your battery at around 10% every 15-20 min of gaming, and that's with some power saves on etc.
How bad is it going to be when the phone is playing resource demanding games like ps1 titles for hours!!

The phone is also very thin, especially considering it has slide out controls, which means they haven't exactly got a big beefy battery to cope with both phone and gaming demands.

It is 1 or the other and anyone who buys this will end up stopping playing the games at all because they realise they actually need to use their phone in the day and will only play at home, which defeats the point of a PORTABLE HANDHELD!

[GodsHand]

Yeah a battery concern is always a concern. But most people now a days just use the text messaging aspect of the phone, then to actually use it for voice communication.

[WhittO]

^^ lol no, I use my phone for email, web browsing, twitter, listening to music and watching youtube videos, ontop of texting and calling.

You don't have a smart phone like this just to text!

That's the point, it is NEVER EVER going to cope for more than a few hours of normal smartphone usage and gaming usage. You will have to choose one or the other to do on the phone in the day, and gaming will 80% of the time loose since most people actually NEED their phones.

Waste of money if you ask me...

Especially since it has touch navigation controls anyway that will get annoying changing from pressing a button to using a touch pad.
It would be worse than playing on a laptop! lol

Why have buttons at all, might aswell just leave them on the touchscreen if you aren't going to put in a good analogue like on PSP.

[jack_burt0n]

@whitto

Thats a bit redundant considering if you do all that on your phone with gps pinging and ur email on constant fetch you wont get through the day as it is on any smartphone.

What i do know is that xperia android phones do a good job battery wise compared to others that plus the battery knowledge gained from psp go etc it will be interesting to see what it pumps out. IT might even end up being the best smart phone battery yet.

[WhittO]

@jack_burt0n

Exactly, I have fetch and push notifications etc turned off and other battery saves and my phone (iphone) lasts comfortably to the end of the day when I put it back on charge.

What I am saying is there is no way you will be able to actually USE any of these features on your smartphone if you wanted to play these games on it too.

A battery is a battery, they are mostly standard used in all smartphone devices, the only difference is some power saves some of them use, this phone wont magically last longer than any of the others, it will prob use an identical battery to the other xperia phones.

[silvacrest]

i have no proof but looking at how thick this device is, im gonna say it has a rather substantial battery, most good batteries range from 1250 mAh to 1500, i believe this phone will have 1700 to 2000 simply because of the point you listed

if they end up using a standard battery i would be bitterly disappointed

[HappyGaming]

The PSPhone will run on a cold fusion reactor that fuses together hydrogen molecules obtained from the water vapor in the air.

It will be able to run for 150 days on a single drop of water.

And if you find your self in the desert just place it under your armpit for a few seconds until its water deposits refill.

[Bathyj]

Jeeze Whitto, negative much?

I game, call, email, watch video and all that and still get a days use from my iPhone.

Why would the PS Phone be any different?
Dont you think someone thought of that?

Personally I need a new phone soon. This is what I wanted PSP to be from the start. Ive never got one because I didnt want to carry a handheld AND a phone with me everywhere.

I was going to get a HTC android phone this year but this might be even better.

[rockleex]

Sony better make the PS Phone and PSP2 compatible.

Otherwise developers will have their audiences split, and when they can't choose between the two... they'll just go straight for the 3DS.

[Spinal]

Alot of Negative people. I use an iPhone 4, i game, make calls, txt, twitter, surf web, youtube through the day at work an my battery lasts the whole day without much of any problem. But of course where im at work im not on the device all the time so it is used generally when im waiting for somethin or someones txtin me.

I would happily sell my iphone 4 for the psphone. simply for the control pad. If it plays ps1 or psp games its total win. Even if it did have a poor battery life. For one i drive to work so id have a car charger an a Charge at my work desk. So I couldnt care for battery life if this device has the features I want.

[WhittO]

^^ lol ye I know I'm being negative but I got my hopes up when I heard about this, I thought it would be PSP2, a really great gaming device that is capable of being a phone, not the other way round.

This is just an Android phone with a D-Pad.

Which isn't a bad thing, just a bit underwhelming considering what they could do if they made a full PSP2 that has mobile functionality.
Atleast they aren't attaching the name "Playstation" to it...

[Blaze929]

Better run Android...

[RememberThe357]

"Anyhow, this is the first time we're seeing the Xperia Play (or Zeus Z1, or whatever it'll end up being called) running [Android] 2.3 in the wild"

[poopface1]

Is it a psp1 with a phone? In other words can it play the dl PSP games, or will it just play minis, certain psn games, and ps1 games.

A phone that plays the DL PSP games too would be sweet, but I think I will wait to see the psp2 before this.

[Kurt Russell]

It's a phone that will never have any battery life for making calls due to the fact you're playing games on it. Or to put it simply, a waste of money and a poor attempt of jumping onto the over rated mobile phone imarket.

[Vaud-Villian]

Apparently its a prototype maximum efficiency panty ruffler

[davekaos]

looking sweet i must say, looks like i will upgrade my contract to this when its out.

a reply to a few of the posts in this thread:
I have the xperia x10i whih i got on launch which had a £500 price tag, however i did what most people did and got this on contract, so for £35 a month i got the phone 1000mins unlimited txt's and unlimited browsing. I would say pretty good deal.

As for battery life i listen to music on my for for around 1 hour then when im on the train to work im either browsing N4G or playing angry birds, then im txt'n throughout the day followed by what i did on the way to work on the way home. Battery still has around 15% sometime more and i work a 12hour shift.

So if the psphone is anything like that im happy

[jack_burt0n]

Cant wait to try it out, GOW and GT on me phone!?

[jay2]

Hi next phone, can't wait to meet you.

[jay2]

How can you disagree that this'll be my next phone lol?

[Spinal]

haha@Jay

My Thoughts Exactly. Cant wait to unwrap my next phone :) those magical symbols on the gamepad !

[offdawall]

cant wait

[Batzi]

ditching my Blackberry for this baby!

[GodsHand]

But the blacker the berry the sweeter the ......... n/m

[RememberThe357]

That is true by the way...

[Lionalliance]

Sounds Exotic.

[Stealth20k]

Whats the point of this? Its not the psp 2 and no it still has nothing to do with playstation

Its a sony ericson xperia smartphone.

[silvacrest]

some people actually want a phone and some people actually want to play games on there phone

do you now see why people may want this?

[Batzi]

Man the PLAYSTATION trademark is all over it. the start, select buttons, 2 analogue touch, X,triangle,O,square and L & R buttons on the back and there is the PLAYSTATION application too! so Yes it is the PS phone whether you like it or not!

[The Lazy One]

I think the large problem will be trying to meet the needs of a high powered gaming device while maintaining its usability as a phone over longer periods of time.

With powerful handsets coming out as well as the 3ds coming out, it could end up being the jack of all trades master of none putting people off.

HOWEVER if they had dual analogues on the PSP like it appears this does (thank god), I think the PSP would have had a much better chance against the DS.

[Spinal]

Stealth, You sir are the Biggest R-Tard N4G has probably Ever seen. It has nothing to do with the Playstation... Yet it has a Playstation App and the Infamous Buttons of the Playstation Dualshock. You sir are just Retarded.

[Raendom]

This is doomed to fail. I predict 12,000 units sold worldwide at best.

[silvacrest]

like dkgshiz said, you are probably thinking of the kin which brought nothing new to the table and used a crappy unknown OS

the android fanboys alone wil make this a hit, nevermind the sony loyalist and then the people who just want to play games on their phone with hardware buttons

[The Lazy One]

the kin failed because it was overpriced and on a bad plan. It was a social phone designed to compete with other social phones, but it was priced like a full fledged smartphone and required a data plan rather than a social plan.

The operating system was the least of it's problems.

[Trroy]

Sorry Raendom. As an android phone, with a unique, and pretty awesome, feature, this phone will likely sell a truckload.

[theafroman]

this THING will fail worse than microsoft's kin and you can quote me on that.

[dkgshiz]

The kin sold less then 1000 copies. Nothing can fail worse then that. Plus with its huge marketing budget its the ultimate fail.

[mcstorm]

I really think Sony should stop this device because its going to be dos it will be a bigger flop than the psp go. The market dose not really have any room for this device the ngaige proved this. If some one wants to play games on the go they can get a psp or as or if they want pick up n play games they use iPhone window phone 7 or android. I just don't see how this will fit in with these devices. I maybe proved wrong once it is out but so far its a no go for me.

[skrug]

this phone is ANDROID

[mcstorm]

I know its a Android phone but your telling me Sony are going to sell this phone for less than £300 on payngo or less than £40 a month on contract?

Android may power the device but as a x10 owner I know sony managed to mess up a good OS with this phone and I think it will be the same as the PS Phone.

If not many people wanted to buy a PSPGo then it will be the same for the PS Phone.

But I also think with Sony releasing a PSP2 this year too it will kill the phone before it is out.

[skrug]

what (new) smartphone cost less than $500?

Yes, SE screwed up with x10, taking them ages to update the OS, but i think they learn from their mistake.

PSPGo was overpriced, and a lot of people got PSP to play free psp games, and at that time PSPgo was not hackable.

PSP2 =/= phone
So it would not kill this device.
You don't see other handhelds killing off Cell phones.

[The Lazy One]

@"what (new) smartphone cost less than $500? "

smartphone pricing is weird. Not really easy to compare to a game system, because they are intentionally overpriced to encourage people to buy contracts. For example, the HTC evo is $449 "regular price", but $199 with contract after mail in rebate. They are probably still making money off the $199 price.

There's a whole lot of unknowns with this thing. I would probably have a better chance of buying it if it were just a handheld gaming device just because it's the first one with dual analogue. Knowing it's a phone makes me feel like there's going to be stuff in there that I don't want or that I'm going to have to put up with a carrier I don't want to put up with.

[bobbyluv]

MCSTORM, WE ALL KNOW UR A TROLL.... thank god for comment history

[mcstorm]

Where u get troll from? Yes I post a few comments but to say I'm a troll IDE love you to back that up. Just because I think the psp phone will not take off dose not make me a troll. I have a psp go and I think its the best handheld on the market but other people don't. I also sais I think the phone is a none starter because of the psp2 and 3ds coming out this year. Just because its got the ps name on the device dose not mean it will be a hit.

[Spinal]

Mcstorm.

The PS Phone Market is not the Same as the PSP GO market.

This is a Smartphone aimed at Smartphone users who play Games. Like me. I never bought a PSP go cause its just a handheld gaming unit it has no Phone on it.

But if the PSP GO was also a phone I would have bought it instead of my iphone 4. If you think this PS Phone device is aimed at Handheld gaming devices like DS an PSP. You are a Fool.

This device is aimed at Smartphone users who like to play Games on their devices. So in Short People like me that play Sonic 4 on my iphone. I would sell my iphone for a PS Phone. Simple.

[mcstorm]

I Agree with you people like you would buy the device but I dont think there are that many people like you out there to make the device a success.

If it is a success then great but I just dont see it being a big hit.

If you dont like what I am saying thats fine your allowed to have your say on it just like I am.

But I see the PSP2 being the big hit device around this time and because of that the PSP Phone will suffer. IMO I dont think there is a market for a gaming/phone device.

[cozmo195]

I just remembered that they added a feature to connect a phone to your ps3 a while back

maybe they had the PlayStation phone in mind when they were making that feature

[DelbertGrady]

Why not just slap the "NGAGE" sticker on it. Is looking very bad right now. Let's hope it gets a good software line-up at least.

[silvacrest]

how does this look "very bad right now"?

and why do people keep bringing up the ngage? nokia had no experience with games, they have no gaming studios, the ngage used a crappy OS, the Ngage was designed poorly, the ngage has crappy software and hardware, the ngage had a tiny screen on both versions......i could go on and on

ironically this sony ericcson device has non of these issues, or so it would seem

[Undeadwolfy]

Unveil at CES anyone?

[Batzi]

yup! I think tomorrow we should hear more about it from Sony officially finally!

[Eddy223]

i REALLY hope so!

[AdventShadow01]

Hmmmm. Am I the only one who thinks that this might fail? I mean remember the n-gage? If the price is right in don't think it will fail but as far as overtaking iphone I think not. The reason why iphone gaming is successful because of the baby micro games like angry birds not full fledged games. If the price is right and battery life is good then it will be a day one for me.

[redrum2]

I would love to "fusion" my Satio with my PSP Go so everytime I hit the road I´ll carry one device and one charger instead of 2 of them. In the hotel I connect the charger, and maybe via HDMI to a flat panel and play GT for hours. On planes I could play a couple of FIFA games or GOW instead of wasting time on the crap that are iphones games.

[joeorc]

this is now not yesteryear. Many people keep bringng up he Ngage as some iomen that the PSPphone will no doubt fail...it's not even out yet but yet before it was released you see people claim failure. the same was said about the PSP...and pretty much the PS3...the fact of the Matter the Ngage did not have a 1st party develope's that make games , like Sony or Nintendo or Microsoft!

that's a big point. Not only can this Run 1st party software from Sony , but will connect to PSN but also the Android App store more than likely!

People claim they want software and Games but it seems many are already all too quick to call it a failure...the same was said about Kinect...

Get over it people!

the point is the software is made by developers this hardware that's in this phone is more robust than even what's in the current PSP and PSPGo

this is not like developer's could not make this platform with games as extensive just as the PSP or the PSPGo.

for quick play games there is Android. having the PSP platform Grow an expand into new markets is a great thing! in my opinion I am for one waiting to see how it turns out.

[bobbyluv]

it looks great

[Trroy]

This will be the best gaming phone on the market, bar none.

Able to play Android and PSP games? Win. No other phone can even touch this. How many unique phone games are even close to the average PSP game, in quality? Like 5?

Also, pure touchscreen controls SUCK for most serious games. If you disagree with this, then you just plain haven't played any real games on a touchscreen phone before, and probably think "Kinect for Android" is right around the corner and will replace all buttons. The PSP controls are a huge, huge win for phone gamers everywhere.

[Spinal]

Probably the Most intelligent post i've seen today on the Web. No lie. You got agree and bubble from me.

You took every single word Out of my mouth an from my finger tips lool Thank You. This phone is Utter Win Day one for me.

[Arup02]

New fanboy discussion: PS phone vs Microsoft Phone.

[WiiPS3beats360]

PS phone = WIN

[B_Rian89]

Im holding off getting the HTC Evo until I know more about this phone

[Hozi89]

You'd think by now we'd have batteries that can last a week before recharging....Oh well, I hope SONY can give us at least 7 hours of great gaming before battery dies.

[Trroy]

Battery tech has barely improved in the past 150 years, really.

It's only because hardware was (not "is") getting smaller so quickly that battery life improved at all, in the past. Nowadays, if you bump the computational power in a handheld, you pretty much lose battery time as well, because you just don't see the performance/power gains of the past 2 decades -- its a tradeoff.

Someone will have to invent micro fusion power cells or something, before you'll get batteries that last a "week" in anything besides a future, micro-process, DS. And then... you've got heat issues to deal with.

[tubers]

From the recent pictures other than these, the phone ain't thin by current smart phone standards. I hope that means a better battery span

[Trevor7843]

I want this.

[supremacy]

Same here, whats attractive about this phone is the buttons. This set up is unique and full of win. Yeah there are emulators already but with a phone like this, those can too be enjoyed on,this device. Perhaps more so because of its control scheme, I cant think of a more enjoyable experience when it comes to this.

Also the thicknes of this phone makes it bulky, but looking at the market I am sure sony like everone else has been taking notes from apple and chose to stick with a thicker design for battery purposes. Remember this is a hybrid, a fusion between a pspgo and a smartphone which has been redesigned to meet googles needs in terms on android and such.

Ngage, where do I start...was primarly a phone center around a mediocre design which in itself was mainly compromised of a keybord and a tiny screen like the GBA micro.

This phone compared to the ngage and a few of the phones ive come across is very sleek, compact and looks to be a very convienient device. 4 inch screen, touchscreen at that, higher resolutions?

Not many games to begin with, add to this the fact it was actually being sold at gaming stores where Sony and the Playstation brand/traits were and are still bigger influences.

Sony has studios, and are great doing business with indy groups around the globe, their resume speaks valume and most 3rd party companies usually offer their services in order to partake in anything sony is involve in, why just ask EA, capcom and those guys. This cant be said of nokia and its phone.

Ngage had a pretty crappy OS literally and at the time gaming in the mobile market wasnt as big, if anything wasnt even a market to begin with at the time.

This phone on the other hand is build to run on android (android 2.3 no less) which is by far a much better and well established operating system. Rivaling only apples very own OS in the mobile business and gaining on them as the numbers would dictate.

Pspgo failed because it was a late design entering the ring where its original form had a bigger userbase and ran its game on physical media which at the time covered most of its market.
Now however its been sometime since then and the library of digital games have grown, add the extra time and push this device will likely get that by the time it releases youll have a pretty decent library of games for it.

Another thing I noticed about batteries and smartphones today is that most are now coming with usb based chargers. So in essence I find myself packing this cable wherever I go, plug and play on the car, laptop ect. Even the current batch of phones out in the market dont last as long and require a charge or two throughout the day anywho, so that negative about this device can also be applied elsewhere.
Like I said, thats what charges are for anyways.
And if youre stuck in the woods, chances are you arent going to get much reception if at all so there goes that aspect of the device anyways.

[CptFlashHeart]

I really don't want this at all.. You can get PS emulators for Android already anyway.

I just bought a HTC Mozart (WP7). Much better.

[supremacy]

The way I see it, I thik some people are quick to dismiss this device because they feel its not going to make an impact in the market.
Ok that maybe so who knows, but on the flipside you got quite a few people holding off their current phone purchase to try and get this and the boys over at engadget are crazy over this device and those guys have a following, so that must speak for something.

The only issue I see, is the message and how Sony sends that message to the consumer.

Another thing would probably be, the carrier or if it will even have one(because people wouldnt like to be or feel obligated join certain carrier/s) But that didnt stop the iphone craze I suppose all it takes is a sleek design with convinience. Price is always a hot topic so we will see.

I just hope they make this phone availale to all the top carriers atleast, but with different incentives. That could help solve that issue. But who knows, we will just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

[PR_FROM_OHIO]

I'm getting this bad boy!!!