Sony Ericsson’s Xperia PLAY is the company’s first smartphone focused on bringing serious gaming and a powerful handset to the masses. The slide-out PlayStation-style game controller is innovative and it enables you to interact with games on your smartphone in ways that just aren’t possible on a touchscreen-only device. With that said, there are some obstacles in the way — PlayStation Suite offers limited games, and there are some pretty big bugs even on the stock Android handset. Do the p...

Sony Ericsson’s first PlayStation certified phone, the Xperia PLAY, can now be pre-ordered from Verizon Wireless for $199.99. The Xperia PLAY runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon II processor. It also has a 4-inch display, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and a VGA forward facing camera for video chats. When you’re ready for action, just slide-out out the full PSP-style gamer pad and load up one of 7 pre-installed titles. We gave the phone, and Star Battalion, a te...

Verizon just officially announced that pre-orders the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY will begin on May 19th and that the device will land in stores on May 26th for $199.99. The Xperia PLAY  — which we most recently saw during CTIA — runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and is equipped with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon II processor with an Adreno 205 GPU, a 4-inch multi-touch display, a full slide-out PSP-style gaming pad, a VGA front-facing camera for video chats, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. Hit the break for Veri...

According to data released by The Nielson Company in March, Sony Ericsson’s share of the U.S. smartphone market is barely a blip on the radar. Apple and RIM combine to own more than half the market, HTC is coming up behind them with 19%, Motorola holds 11%, Samsung has a 7% share and Sony Ericsson sits somewhere in the “Other” category, grouped among an undefined number of nameless manufacturers that combine to share roughly 3% of the smartphone market in the U.S. But Sony Ericsson smartpho...

Sony Ericsson on Friday launched its highly anticipated Xperia PLAY smartphone in 11 markets today, with six additional markets to follow over the next two weeks. Alongside 60 games, the Android-powered Xperia PLAY smartphone — known ahead of its official announcement as the “PlayStation Phone” — is now available in the U.K., Germany, Russia, Hong Kong and seven other markets around the world. A U.S. launch of the gaming phone from Verizon Wireless is expected some time this spring. Sony Eric...

Ahead of the release of Sony Ericsson’s highly anticipated Xperia PLAY smartphone, Sony PlayStation games have begun appearing in Google’s Android Market. Five title’s became available in the Market on Thursday, including Syphon Filter, MediEvil and Cool Boarders 2. Currently available titles are listed for $6.38 each, and more are expected in the coming days and weeks. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia PLAY will be the first PlayStation Certified Android smartphone when it launches soon, and it...

Dear ad firm that put together Sony Ericsson’s latest round of Xperia PLAY promos: thank you. In its latest effort to garner some attention for its upcoming gaming Goliath, Sony Ericsson brought actress and comedian Kristen Schaal on board to go over some of the Xperia PLAY’s finer points. In the spots, Schaal uses the Xperia PLAY to shoot herself in the face, watch furry kittens, score a triple-kill, check herself out on YouTube and even… edit some spreadsheets. If you haven’t seen t...

While mobile gaming fans around the world wait with baited breath for an official announcement, anxious Xperia Play hopefuls in Spain finally got the news they have been waiting for on Monday. Sony Ericsson Spain has announced availability of the highly anticipated Sony Ericsson Xperia Play beginning April 1st in the Spanish market. The gaming monster will retail for a hefty €649 (just over $900) off contract, but pricing can vary greatly between markets so those in the U.S. awaiting the Xperia Play should...

We just swung by the Sony Ericsson booth to get a glimpse at two of the company’s most exciting new handsets, the Xperia Play and the Xperia arc. Although we can’t say we’re too surprised that SE was showing off these two devices at Mobile World Congress — both handsets have been leaking like a soup strainer over the past few months — it is nice to get some hands-on time with both devices. Will the newly announced devices be enough to catapult Sony Ericsson back to mobile handset glory...

The worst kept secret in the cell phone industry is no longer a secret: Sony Ericsson officially outed the Xperia Play smartphone in a creepy commercial that premiered during Super Bowl XLV. Officially premiered, that is, since the spot was first revealed online last week as yet another slip in a string of leaks that began months ago. The Xperia Play will be the first Android smartphone to feature Sony’s PlayStation Suite, a gaming platform for cell phones that will eventually bring an extensive develo...

Neither major announcement comes as much of a surprise, but Sony on Thursday unveiled its portable gaming strategy moving forward. Two key pieces of Sony’s mobile gaming future were finally made official: the company’s next-generation PSP, known for now as “NGP” or Next Generation Portable, and its cross-platform mobile gaming framework dubbed PlayStation Suite. The former features a 5-inch, 960 x 544-pixel OLED touchscreen display, two analog controllers, two touchpad control surfaces...

Mirroring a Bloomberg report, which mirrored an MCV report, which mirrored earlier rumors, Reuters now reports that Sony plans to unveil its next-generation PlayStation Portable gaming device at an event on January 27th. The event, which will take place in Japan on Thursday, falls on the same day Nintendo is expected to report a 40% slide in its quarterly profits. Reuters reiterates that Sony’s new portable gaming device will feature a touchscreen display and integrated 3G connectivity. Reuters also n...

Sony Ericsson might not be ready to unveil the highly anticipated Xperia Play at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but the world is most definitely ready to see this little guy get official. Perhaps in an effort to appease the masses of anxious mobile gamers waiting impatiently to get their mits on the upcoming PlayStation-branded Gingerbread phone, Chinese enthusiast blog IT168 has issued an extensive preview of the device. And when we say extensive, we mean it. Details found within the preview in...

Sony Ericsson’s first PlayStation Phone, thought to be launching this spring as the Xperia Play, has been captured on film yet again. This new round of photos offers very little in the way of exciting new details, but there is at least one item of interest to be found: the hardware seen in the new shot, while not necessarily final, is definitely built more recently than the examples we’ve seen so far. As can be seen very clearly in the images, the device in these pictures now bears both Xperia and...