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Sony pushing ICS to more devices next week, confirms Xperia Play won't be upgraded
Owners of the Xperia Play, it's time to curl up with a teddy bear and your favorite ice cream -- just as long as it's not in sandwich form. After the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the "PlayStation Phone" from the Android 4.0 upgrade list yesterday, Sony has followed it up with a full confirmation accompanied by the usual explanation. As you may have already guessed, the manufacturer tells us that after extensive testing, it was determined that "a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smartphone on Ice Cream Sandwich... in this instance the ICS upgrade would have compromised stability." Sony went on to discuss that it received similar feedback from the developer community after releasing a beta ROM. Still, after being told repeatedly that the entire 2011 smartphone lineup would receive the update, we can't help but be a bit heartbroken by the news. In the same breath, however, Sony also updated its timeline for the rest of the lineup that is still on schedule to receive upgrades to Ice Cream Sandwich: the Xperia arc, neo, mini, mini pro, pro, active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman will begin receiving their refreshes next week. The Xperia S is still on track for an end of June rollout, with the Xperia P closely following it and the Xperia U sometime in the third quarter. It's just unfortunate that the good tidings must be balanced out by equally horrible news, depending on which device you own.
Refresh Roundup: week of April 30th, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
GameKeyboard 2.0 requires root, maps Xperia Play gamepad to all Android games (video)
Upon its debut, the Xperia Play suffered from a lack of game titles that were compatible with its unique built-in gamepad. While the selection has improved considerably since its inception, the question remains: wouldn't it be nice if the handset supported any Android game you threw at it? Wonder no longer, because that's exactly what GameKeyboard 2.0 brings to the table. Yes, the app requires root access, but most importantly, it allows users to map on-screen touch controllers to the Xperia Play's physical gamepad. While it's slightly cumbersome to setup for the first time, anybody who has ever configured an emulator with a USB game controller will feel right at home. GameKeyboard 2.0 sells for $2.49 in the Play Store, and if you'd like a quick overview of how it all works, just hop the break for a video. Those who proceed with the download will also benefit from written instructions (for both root access and configuration) in the xda-developers forums. [Thanks, Dreb]
Sony outs Xperia Play ICS beta for unlocked phones, wants to know which games work
While the promised Sony Xperia Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade rollout is quickly running out of March and into April for all models, the company has just unleashed a new beta version of the upgrade for Xperia Play owners. Following the alpha release in December and a beta update in February for the Arc S, Neo V and Ray, Sony has pushed this version for the Play to find out which games may need some work to be compatible with Android 4.0. The usual drawbacks remain however, so because this release requires unlocking your bootloader -- which will keep users from upgrading to the final ICS update when it comes out -- and it lacks such creature comforts as Google Mobile Services apps (Gmail, Google Maps, Face Unlock) it's intended for developers only. If your gamepad-equipped handset is staying official-upgrade only, you can safely check out a video of the beta ROM running on an Arc S embedded after the break and take this as a heads up that the final release is that much closer.
