While smartphones have come a long way in recent years, there’s one area where they’re still reliably crappy – playing games. Despite the best efforts of game developers, a touchscreen simply doesn’t allow for the sort of precision control you need in anything more serious than Angry Birds. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play solves that problem.
Although it looks like any other smartphone on the market, the Xperia Play boasts a fully function control pad you can slide out. With a d-pad, face-buttons, a touchpad in the centre and a pair of shoulder buttons, it has everything you need to play video-games the way God and nature intended.
On that note, the Xperia also gives you access to Sony’s PlayStation Suite – an app store dedicated to premium games. Basically, you get AAA Sony titles like God of War, Little Big Planet, Wipeout, Uncharted, and more optimised for the phone. Alternatively, you can just download regular Android Apps. Either way, you get a level of control not previously seen on any smartphone and games that make Apple’s selection look sad and pathetic.
Oh, and if you want to be boring, you can also make calls, use the 5-megapixel camera, send Tweets, update your Foursquare status and all the other stuff regular smartphones do.
Sony has confirmed an April-June lunch window locally.