July 31st, 2011 
Droid 
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Package includes: Phone, Battery, Charger, USB-cable, 16 GB MicroSD memory card, MH650 stereo headphones, Cover, Instruction manual.
Design, size, controls
In this section I will evaluate Xperia Play from the viewpoint of everyday phone usage, and will review its gaming components in another post. Before you read this post, please read the first part of the review – Sony Ericsson Xperia Play positioning. The phone turned out to be quite big in size, all because of the gaming controls. The size of the device is 119x62x16 mm and it weighs 175 grams. In the hand the unit felt quite heavy compared to the modern phones. To be honest I can’t remember when I last used such a heavy phone. Although this is something most people will get used to rather quickly, some users may still feel a bit of a discomfort. Most Android smartphones weight much less and are usually twice thinner. Therefore, based on size and weight, I would say that phone’s ergonomics is pretty average.
Sony Erricsson’s engineers must have tried to reduce the weight of the unit by not using any metal in the body of the device. It is made entirely of plastic. Manufacturer used glossy plastic, which looks very nice. The model comes in two colours – black and white. I liked both colour combinations.
On the left side of the device you will find a micro-USB port, and a 3.5mm jack for headphones or headset. On the right side – two gaming keys and a volume button between them. This button is not very easy to use because of its location, but it is a necessary measure, as if it was placed elsewhere gaming keys would not work.
At the top of the device there is an on/off button, which has a built-in LED. It glows green when the phone is connected to the main power. There is a proximity sensor above the screen. Front facing camera is located next to the sensor. Four mechanical keys are located under the screen.
On the back you can see a 5-megapixel camera, LED flash and second microphone. Two speakers can also be seen on the back cover.
The build quality of the phone is good. Plastic is easy to mark, so I would recommend to carry the phone in a case, which is included in the package.
Screen
These days Sony Ericsson does not have access to modern displays; so, the matrix used in the Xperia Play lags behind even today’s TFT-screens by several generations. I don’t know what to say about the screen in Play, technologically it is years behind the market.
Screen specifications are fairly generic:
- Diagonal – 4 inches
- Resolution – 480 x 854 pixels
- Capacitive multi-touch
- Displays up to 16 million colours
- Supports automatic screen rotation
There is no brightness control, and overall screen is very dim. Automatic brightness control also does not exist. This was probably done to increase the battery life of the device, especially in game mode. And finally, it is very hard to see what is displayed on the screen in the sun.
Battery
Xperia Play has a 1500 mAh Li-POL BST-41 battery. According to the manufacturer, the phone can work up to 425 hours in standby mode, and up to 8 hours in talk mode.
In my tests phone worked for about half a day with moderate use (up to one hour of calls, about 30 minutes of games, 20 minutes of web browsing, and a couple of hours of music). Full battery recharging takes 2 hours (1.5 hours to charge it up to 80%).
Battery life in games depends on whether you play in headphones or not, and what kind of game you have selected. The average time of continuous play ranges from 3 to 4 hours. This is extremely small for a gaming device. If you’re going to use this device for games, you should buy a second battery; otherwise you will be without a phone by lunchtime.
Communications
- USB – Data transfer speed depends on the memory card used. In my case, the 16GB SDHC card showed the rate of 10 MB/s, which is more than enough.
- Bluetooth – The phone supports all common profiles. File transfers and stereo are supported in Android 2.3 itself.
- Wi-Fi – Phone supports all common encryption standards, as well as automatic network search.
Memory and Processor
The phone has 512MB of RAM and around 400MB of space for user data. Given that Android Gingerbread allows applications to be installed on a memory card, this memory is more than enough for every usage scenario.
Few words about the processor used in the phone. Sony Ericsson has always preferred Qualcomm. Xperia Play utilises the 1GHz QSD8255 processor. This was a popular speed of last generation’s devices. It is really not possible to compare it with this year’s flagship devices, built on dual-core processors.
Camera
The phone has a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. Quality of the pictures is acceptable if taken on a sunny day, but is not that good if shot indoors or in low light conditions.
Maximum resolution for video recording is 800×480 pixels. Second microphone is not used when shooting video. Video quality can be better, but it’s not much worse than other phones.
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