Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Discussion

[fishbowlhead]

Is the Xpreia Play good as a phone too?

Does it handle all the Android emulators OK?

Does is start sloooowing down after a couple of months?
My Wildfire is grindtastic these days and the main memory is full of apps that can't be moved to the SD card!

Love the idea of a phone with proper gaming controls, touchscreen doesn't cut the mustard.

I got one on the day it came out and the battery life was truly abysmal. Would drain at about 1% every 5 mins with no sign from any app tracking program of what the problem was (i could only put it down to a hidden program being in constant use) Went through 4 handsets before i finally made orange give me a different handset.

Other issues with he phone, brightness on the screen was really low, fine for indoors but in the sun you cant see the screen at all (again might of been fixed on newer models). Camera had a blue tint on every photo, again might of been fixed.


BUT. build quality of the gaming controls was fantastic, solid aluminium, with really nice clicky buttons that feel like something nintendo put together, cant fault it on that at all, track pads were slightly pointless but when you have a dpad that good who cares.


So aside from the initial problems when it came out which may or may not have been fixed, as a phone for emulation gaming its fantastic, plus it all runs along pretty quick too, didnt have any problems with android lag even when taking the system with lots of tasks, so thats another plus, N64 emulation was running full speed for example.

[Shozuki]

yeah if gaming is a priority you cant get better then this really...

...unless... You look at Purchasing a Samsung Galaxy S2 or Galaxy Nexus with an iControlPad. Simply put these phones are gorgeous and without a shadow of any doubt are the best phones on the market.

[dataDave]

Yeah. The best phone in the universe. Mine runs two full days without charge, a custom ROM and kernel is the only way to run it. Out of the box they die fast and come preloaded with tons of junk you can't get rid of.

[eastyy]

saw someone running dead space on this phone got to say i was impressed it ran smoothly may pick up one of these

[monel]

Is the Xpreia Play good as a phone too? Does it handle all the Android emulators OK? Does is start sloooowing down after a couple of months? My Wildfire is grindtastic these days and the main memory is full of apps that can't be moved to the SD card! Love the idea of a phone with proper gaming controls, touchscreen doesn't cut the mustard.

QC, if you need to free up memory you might want to look into messing around with your phone, maybe installing a custom rom or something (maybe rooting it). I haven't messed with my phone but you maybe should try that- you'll be able to move apps to SD. I hate phones, you purchase one and 5 new ones are out in a couple of months. The market is crazy.

[25.05.2005]

Yeah, the internal storage is annoying on an unmodified phone.

Rooting. custom roms or the fix described here solves it though for the most part;

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1089282

At around ?150 for an unlocked Xperia Play I would deffo highly recommend it, espeically for gamers (like I assume most of us are here...)

ps. someone else try out OnLive on their Play, interested to hear opinions on it. Nearly all the games have 30 minutes free trials so you can get a good feel for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeKQDaXkJE0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL2hFUdhuk8

[Silvergun X]

I caved and bought an Xperia Play for ?150, especially seeing as I could trade in my current WP7 handset for ?100. Result!

The analog pad type thingies took a while to get used to, but the device is absolutely superb. First thing I did was root it and remove all the bloatware crap on it with Titanium Backup. I haven't overclocked it yet but I reckon I will do in the future for TigerArcade, as that's chugging along with sound turned on.

Tried OnLive - I'm very impressed with it, but it does NOT handle dark areas very well. Even with the brightness on the device maxed out, some parts of Driver: San Francisco were impossible to see. Hopefully they'll add an option in the future to up the gamma a little bit.

Control wise it entirely depends on the game. Dirt 3 for example, I had to use the D-Pad as opposed to the analog pads, but Driver: SF was a beauty to play with the analog, and precise steering was easy.

The lack of L stick and R stick button clicks is odd, hopefully they'll add these two buttons (as well as RB and LB) as touch screen buttons while the pad is out. Already sent feedback to the OnLive crew, wonder if they'll pay any attention to that.

Bandwidth usage is also an odd one. Dirt 3 seems to lag like a bitch where my microconsole and PC client are smooth as butter, but everything else seems to be okay. I'm not sure why that's happening but I'll put it down to the wireless chip in the Xperia not being so hot with less-than-perfect signals.

[dataDave]

I haven't overclocked it yet but I reckon I will do in the future for TigerArcade, as that's chugging along with sound turned on.

I've had mine up to 2.0ghz briefly on the Performance governor (CPU locked at 2.0ghz at all times) and it still chuggs with the audio, so good luck with that.

I think it's down to how the emulator handles sound, the hardware should be able to piss CPS2 stuff, and it does as you can see for yourself when the audio is off... I hope this gets resolved one day, it's the only thing stopping it from having 100% perfect CPS2 emu!!

How good is it with the audio off though!? I can't believe my GF had this handset for nearly 6 months without me liberating it for some real use. All thanks to 25.05.2005.

[Silvergun X]

Jrioni's CPS2 emulator is full speed with sound. Has a few very minor glitches on it every now and then but I've happily been playing full speed Progear on it.

[dataDave]

Oh my word why have I not heard of this emulator before?? It's 3:30am here and I'm blitzed after a long Oblivion session, but by damn you I'm in pursuit of this emu now for a quick sample before bed...

[Silvergun X]

Apparently has local and online multiplayer code as well. You need to forward port 9919 to your phone and you can play online.

Wanna give it a shot when you're not so blitzed? Try it with some AvP or something. Dunno how good it will be.

[dataDave]

We could give it a go, it might be jerky as hell though.

Is this the CPS2HD apk? I'm sure I tried that before...

[Silvergun X]

That's the one. I've tried it with Mars Matrix, Gigawing, and Progear. No problem with any of them with sound.

The only issue I had was that controls would occasionally **** up and not work if you were holding in one of the other buttons, but all you need to do is go to Option and turn off Hotkey Down Mode Interface (fck knows what that even does.)

[Silvergun X]

Okay now I really want to try online play with Shadow over Mystara - I remember that being an excellent game multiplayer!

[dataDave]

I'll pick this up tomorrow and we can give it a whirl.