Delivers its promise and serves its purpose well! Will not disappoint!
I was on the market for a new phone, as well as a portable video game system. Considering I had used an android before, I remember being able to play some decent games and emulators even though the phone specs weren't anything special. I started Google-ing for a "video game phone" and this is what I found. The first thing I thought when I saw the phone, was that it looks remarkably similar to the psp go, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was at least partially the inspiration for this phone, if not perhaps the other way around.
On previous android phones I found it difficult to play most games unless it was Angry birds or something similar. Emulators were complicated with virtual keypads on the touch screen, didn't work all that great as they aren't the most responsive, not to mention your fingers blocking a rather large portion of the screen. In the end the only playable games were Pokemon and other games that didn't require too much active key pressing. If you wanted to play a Mortal Kombat rom, you can forget about it.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play addresses these issues with it's slide out gamepad. It responds really well and makes for the best gaming experience on any phone that I have yet to try.
The phone itself has a nice feel in your hands, it feels solid and comfortable with easy access to all the buttons, including L + R. It is not a paper thin phone like most other phones out there, when the phone's gamepad is slid in it feels nice and thick and doesn't feel like it will break by simply bumping into it, leaning on it, or even dropping it, although I'm not going to test this.
On any other android phone, I dismiss the N64 emulator as it never worked really well with the touch screen analog controls being a nightmare, not to mention most phones just have a hard time running it because of hardware restraints. I was happy to see that there are N64 emulators available that allow the use of the analog controls on the phone, and on top of that, It plays most of the games flawlessly, with some games lagging a little more then others. You can usually fix this by adjusting certain graphics settings and maximum allowable consecutive frame skips, not to mention some emulators even giving you the option to adjust the resolution.
As for battery life, it's decent. What really put me on the fence about buying this phone were some comments about the phone having a short batterry life. Sure, if you sit around playing games all day, messing around on your phone and such, your phone may last you one active day. I only game out on it about an hour or so a day, with occassional txting and calling, and the phone usually lasts a good 3-5 days without needing a charge. Apparently it takes 5.5 hours of straight gaming with brightness at maximum to drain out the battery, although I have not tested this out, it sounds fairly accurate.
In the end, if what you're looking for is a gaming phone, there really is no better choice currently available on the market, if any other choice at all, and for 220-240$, how can you go wrong with this? It does everything it claims it can do, and for a decent price at that.Read full review
