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Game on: Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G ready at AT&T for $50
Just over four months after the unique device hit Verizon stores, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G has now made it past AT&T's front door and onto shelves nationwide. The unique factor on this particular version of the "PlayStation Phone" is the inclusion of 14.4Mbps HSPA+ -- with enhanced backhaul, naturally -- and will be the first PlayStation-Certified smartphone on AT&T's network. At $50, the pricing is certainly competitive since it ships with Android 2.3.3, a 1GHz single-core CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, 4-inch 854 x 480 display, and seven pre-loaded games. At a full $150 less than Big Red's launch price, the carrier may move a few units. If you're one of those that could be persuaded, head to the source link and get your shopping on.
PlayStation Suite SDK beta coming in November, offering new games in spring 2012
We haven't heard much about the PlayStation Suite for quite some time, but at the TGS 2011 opening keynote today, Sony announced that it'll finally be rolling out an SDK for said cross-platform framework in November. Furthermore, Sony's expecting new games and apps to be available for the PlayStation Suite in spring, which means willing C# developers will be busy over the next few months should they wish to deploy their software across certified devices -- these currently include the PS Vita, Xperia Play, Tablet S and the upcoming Tablet P. Of course, we're also hoping that Sony will convince at least one other manufacturer to get its NVIDIA Tegra devices certified for the PlayStation Suite, otherwise it'll be tough to get the ball rolling for everyone.
Artists hack Sony Ericsson's Xperia phones to see the unseen universe, use fire as a flash
For most of us, cellphones are for texting, calling and maybe the occasional tweet, but what happens when you hand them over to some of the world's most creative minds? Giving hackers, artists and intellectuals free reign to mess with the various Xperia phones, Sony found out just how capable its handsets really are. Using a few tweaks and hacks, artists were able to create an installation that breathes fire when you snap a photo, a remote-controlled boat with GPS and a bike that uses colored lights to spell out secret words only visible when captured on camera. When Sony asked astrophysicist Joshua Peek to give it a go, he took full sky maps and telescope image data to build an app with an up-close view of electromagnetic patterns in the sky. To round out the project, musician Annabel Lindquist composed a song based on the sounds of Paris she recorded with an Arc. Now, if they could just mod one to avoid dropped calls, we'd be all set. Videos of their ingenuity in action after the break.
Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play 4G hitting AT&T on September 18th for $50 on contract
We knew good and well it was coming, and come it has. Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play has made the natural GSM shift in the States in order to grace Ma Bell's airwaves, and despite the "4G" naming convention, this fellow will be topping out at HSPA+. In other words, LTE lovers will need to look elsewhere. This marks the first launch of a PlayStation-certified smartphone for AT&T, and given that it's been around the block a time or two, the carrier is (smartly) pricing it at just $49.99 on a two-year contract -- a buck-fifty less than what it launched for on Verizon Wireless. As we'd heard, it'll ship with Android 2.3.3, a 1GHz CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, a 4-inch display (854 x 480) and will arrive in an exclusive 'stealth blue' hue. AT&T customers will also be blessed with a gratis Multimedia Dock (DK300) and MC100 music cable, not to mention seven pre-loaded games at no charge. Full details on that are hosted up after the break, and interested consumers can line up to grab their own on September 18th. %Gallery-132961%
Mojang offers limited edition Minecraft Xperia Play on eBay
There may not be many people willing to pay over $1,000 for an Xperia Play, but it turns out there's at least a few willing to go nuts when there's some Minecraft involved. That limited edition model pictured above will be given away to a few lucky winners at the upcoming Gamescon conference in Germany, but Minecraft developer Mojang has decided to let one loose on eBay beforehand, where the bidding has already topped a grand with a full six days left. Adding a bit of extra incentive for those with deep pockets, Mojang says that it will also donate all the proceeds from the auction to an as yet unnamed charity. Hit the source link below if you're in a generous and / or Minecraft-obsessed mood. [Thanks, Andrew]
Xperia Play spins original PlayStation One ISOs via emulator hack
Android developer Yifan Lu has reverse engineered the Xperia Play's native PlayStation emulator to make it run ripped PSX ISOs. That means you're no longer limited to Crash Bandicoot or the handful of other PSX titles that have officially trickled out from Sony Ericsson. Instead, you can grab your original games from the attic, rip them into disc images, and bring them back to life on your Play. Er, assuming that's legal, of course. Perhaps you should move to Papua New Guinea before trying it. We've attached one of Lu's videos to prove that his tweaked emulator actually works. His custom ISO of choice? More Bandicoot.
Refresh Roundup: week of August 1, 2011
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. 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 from 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! Official Android updates Verizon and Motorola have finally begun rolling out the Gingerbread update for the Motorola Droid X2. [via PCMag] Sticking with Verizon, the LG Revolution is in the process of receiving maintenance update VS910ZV6, which consists of a few new features and bug fixes. This is not a major refresh. [via AndroidCentral] The HTC Desire Z has been updated to Gingerbread in the UK. As of now, only those devices without carrier branding are seeing the OTA show up. [via PocketNow] Unofficial Android updates / custom ROMs / misc hackery Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play, Neo, and Arc should soon be added to the CyanogenMod repository. Once approved, we'll likely see nightlies appear in the near future. [via PocketNow] Did somebody say Xperia Play? Yes, we did. It looks like the phone's finally been rooted, and the bootloader's been cracked. [via Droid-Life] The Motorola Photon 4G came out last Sunday, but XDA was able to root it within a couple days. [via SprintFeed] XDA's also the provider of a Froyo update to the Samsung Continuum. [via XDA] Along with an official update for the Droid X2, an SBF is now available for download. [via Droid-Life] Other platforms The Dark Forces Team has released tools to enable custom ROMs to be used on your first-gen Windows Phone device. Currently, the supported phones are: the HTC Mozart, HTC Surround, HTC Trophy (excluding Verizon's version), and the HTC 7 Pro (excluding the HTC Arrive). [via Windows Phone Hacker] Shortly after this, the HTC HD7 also got its first custom ROM courtesy of XDA. The downloadable package consists of a ChevronWP7 unlock, a Mango Beta 2 update, and the ROM. Head over to XDA to grab it. [via Windows Phone Daily]
Verizon's Xperia Play now on sale for $100, Crash Bandicoot spins in celebration
Getting your PlayStation-certified gaming fix on just got 50 percent cheaper. Verizon's cut the price of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play in half on its website, selling for $100 with contract only four months after being greeted with open arms. The price cut is a result of Big Red's "Back to School" promotion, though it's difficult to believe this one will come out the other end of the sale any costlier than this. Was this sudden reduction made to instigate a price war with AT&T now that it's introduced the model to its lineup? Or, is this a last-ditch effort to bolster lackluster sales before the Play is discontinued? It's hard to say -- given its meager selection of PlayStation Suite titles, we can't imagine that the product's flying off of shelves. Still, five Jacksons is much more reasonable for anyone who just has to have The Sims 3 on the go, right?
AT&T launches Sony Ericsson Xperia Play with Gingerbread, blue color option
Well, looky here. AT&T has very quietly revealed it's going to sell the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. No press release, no splashy press conference backed by a cheesy disco soundtrack. The thing just showed up at the carrier's holiday preview event here in New York City. We're told it runs Gingerbread, which would make it AT&T's second Android 2.3 handset behind the newly launched HTC Status. Alas, AT&T won't say just yet when the Play will be available or how much it will cost on contract, but we do know a couple things for sure. One, it'll run on the carrier's 21MBps-capable HSPA+ network. Two, it'll be available in a "Stealth Blue" color option, in addition to the stock black model we've handled before. Other than that, the specs -- namely, the 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chip and 4-inch (854 x 480 display) -- remain the same. Hands-on shots with the sparkling navy number below. %Gallery-128226%
How would you change Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play?
It came with a bang, but even Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play seems to have already become yesterday's treasure in a world swamped with dual-core superphones. Still, the Play remains the only Android phone on the market with a full-on slide-out gamepad, and while the library's still lacking, there's oodles of promise here. And that, friends, is where you come in. For those that forked over whatever it took to snag one, we're anxious to know how you'd do things differently. We're guessing that SE didn't sink an absurd amount of resources into this thing without a successor in mind, so what are you hoping to see in Revision B? A higher-res display? A few more buttons to mash? Ice Cream Sandwich? Get as crazy as you wanna be in comments below, won't you?
Console vs. PC redux: how mobile gaming will reshape the industry (again)
They're a growing threat, these simple games with their simple designs, simple controls, and simple graphics. They don't offer the full, premium experience that the real gamers want. They aren't hardcore enough. They aren't serious enough. They're just too... casual. In the '90s these were all complaints used to describe the strengthening console menace. Back then, a younger me squandered his meager income at the local Babbage's or Electronics Boutique, stores full of PC games in cardboard boxes -- console titles relegated to a few little shelves. It wouldn't take long for those consoles to take over those stores and, along the way, the entire industry. Between just 1998 and 2006 console software sales more than doubled, from $2.5 billion to $6.7 billion, while PC game sales dropped from $1.8 billion to $970 million. Even the FPS, once exclusive domain of the PC, is now a console enterprise, with Call of Duty: Black Ops launching on 4.9 million sales on the Xbox 360 and PS3. The PC version, meanwhile, sold less than 400,000 copies (the NPD lumped them in with sales of the Nintendo DS and Wii versions). Who cares about ancient history? If you're a gamer you should, because it's happening again. This time, though, its console gamers lobbing the same lamentations at Angry Bird players, Words With Friends addicts, and ever-sneaky Fruit Ninjas. As smartphones and tablets get more powerful, the dedicated gaming machine looks more and more quaint. Where once software supported hardware in one big, happy family, it's all becoming rather more... disjointed. For a gamer like me, that's a little troubling. If app gaming does for consoles what those consoles did to the PC scene a decade ago, a lot of big game studios are going to be in trouble, and a lot of gamers are going to be pining for the good 'ol days.
Minecraft Pocket Edition on Xperia Play hands-on (video)
Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play is clearly all about gaming, so we weren't surprised to see a fair amount of E3 footage dedicated to the PlayStation Phone. Minecraft was among the 20 odd games on display at the booth, and the version we had a chance to play with happens to look remarkably similar to that demo we saw pop up a couple weeks ago. The game will be exclusive to the Play when it hits online stores in Q3, but there's no word on pricing just let -- though here's to hoping it'll be free. In the demo we played, you select your blocks on the touchscreen -- or you can just cycle through them with the circle and square buttons. You won't find Creepers, crafting, or night mode in this version, but we're still a few months away from the launch, so there's a chance we'll see those features when it's fully baked. You'll need to wait a bit longer before playing on your own device, but check out our hands-on video after the break for a taste of Mojang's pocket-sized Minecraft.%Gallery-125689% Tim Stevens contributed to this report.
Sony Ericsson to showcase over 20 new games optimized for Xperia Play
One thing we criticized in our Xperia Play review was the lack of games specifically adapted to the handheld's controls. So it's only fair to mention that a bevy of new titles is on the horizon -- some old, some new, but all optimized for this specific brand of button-mashing. Headline acts include Minecraft (a port we've already seen in action) as well as Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard and Battlefield Bad Company 2, both of which have both been accruing headshots on iOS devices for a while now. Hit the PR after the break for the full list of titles, but don't expect much in the way of pricing or availability. Those details will be announced at E3 next week, when the Xperia Play will have to compete for attention against the Sony NGP. Guess we'll patiently have to twiddle our thumbs until it's time to twiddle them with vigor.
Dropbox joins arms with Sony Ericsson and Softbank, looks to expand elsewhere
By Dropbox's own numbers, its base has grown from five million to 25 million users in the last year, and now claims paying customers in 175 countries. Not content with this explosion, however, the company is establishing partnerships in the mobile arena to kick its growth into hyperdrive. Sony Ericsson is the first willing participant, and several of its phones (including the Arc and Play) will ship preloaded with the software throughout ten European countries. On the mobile carrier side, Tokyo-based Softbank will soon include the blue box on a handful of its Android devices, and Verizon is being courted by Dropbox, too -- nothing definite between these two, however. Good first steps, but if the company really wants to get rolling, it might want to pair up with a phone that has world domination in mind. Just a thought.
Does this Xperia Play have HDMI output? (updated: dev unit)
Here's a little intrigue to go along with your morning cuppa. The Xperia Play is a lovely bit of hardware lacking in a few crucial areas -- one being an inability to play games over HDMI. That's a definite problem for those who aren't quite ready to devote themselves wholesale to gaming on the (very) small screen. We had hoped Sony might release a micro-USB to HDMI adapter at some point, and indeed when we first saw the image above of a Play pumping graphics to an HDTV that's what we thought we had. But, on closer examination, we realized that the cable is coming out of the left side of the handset. On the current retail Play there's nothing there but shiny chrome, which you can see for yourself after the break. We also took a look at the exposed motherboard, and there are no obvious contacts. This could be a developer edition with additional ports, but none of the dev whitepapers we've pored over this morning mention any such things, so maybe a revised version of the hardware is coming that adds a hole where once there was none. We'll keep working to find out what's up, but weigh in for yourself in the comments below. Updated: Sure enough, this appears to be just a developer unit, one which we expect to be seeing a lot more of at E3 next week. [Thanks, Sam]
Xperia Play finally lands at O2 UK, available in black or white
It took a while, but that O2-exclusive (for the UK) white Xperia Play is finally with us. Earlier this month, the UK carrier had promised to deliver the Play in June, but evidently things have gone better than expected, as we now see "in stock" signage next to both the black and white models of Sony Ericsson's gaming phone. Pricing is identical for both color variants, starting at "free" when attached to expensive (£34 per month) two-year contracts and peaking at £430 ($702) on pre-pay deals. O2 also throws in a matching multimedia dock plus three bonus games to sweeten the deal. We're guessing that Android 2.3.3 update that Sony Ericsson just rolled out for the Xperia Play might finally have allayed O2's software concerns, which has allowed it to now start selling the device in earnest.
Sony Ericsson boosts Xperia Arc and Play to 2.3.3, includes Facebook integration
Well, Sony Ericsson might just deserve a gold star for effort. A week ago we reported that a possible rollout of the long-rumored Facebook integration update would come to select Xperia series phones this week, and we're seeing the process begin today. The recipients of this particular push are the Arc and Play, though it will come to all new Xperia devices down the road. While the download includes Android 2.3.3, the major focus is on "Facebook Inside Xperia," another way for you to sync your social media with other aspects of your phone, such as contacts, calendar, and photo gallery. Other improvements in the package include WiFi stability, improved battery performance, HD video recording performance (Arc only), and bug fixes. Don't stress if your phone hasn't seen the update yet; Sony Ericsson says it's rolling it out gradually due to issues with individual markets and carrier branding. No specific timeframe was given, though the company mentioned that "it can take a while." Should you be one of the lucky recipients to get it today, however, sound off in the comments below.
Verizon bonanza: Droid X2, Revolution, Trophy, and Xperia Play hit Big Red today
Verizon is seriously diversifying its portfolio today with the official in-store launch of four new smartphones. Three of them roll up in Android gear, though they all have major selling points beyond Google's software. LG's Revolution is the sole LTE-capable handset of the bunch, bringing with it a 4.3-inch screen and pre-installed Netflix for $250. The Droid X2 undercuts it on price, at $200, but doubles the core count with its Tegra 2 processor and ramps up resolution to qHD (960 x 540). Gaming aficionados can spend the same amount on the Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson, which offers a slideout gamepad and unique PlayStation Certified status. Bringing up the rear is HTC's well-traveled Trophy, a 3.8-inch Windows Phone that accepts it's a little late to the party and therefore slices $50 off its asking price, with a $150 levy before the obligatory two-year contract. What say you -- buy, try, or keep waiting?
Xperia Play first in line for mobile Minecraft port (video)
If you want to be the first in your hood to take Minecraft with you wherever you go, you'll have to pick up an Xperia Play. The block-building game where cubed avatars hide from creepers and create virtual CPUs will land on the so-called PlayStation Phone before coming to other Android devices and iOS later this year. The Play version will have customized controls that take advantage of the gamepad and button layout found on the Sony Ericsson handheld, though when exactly it will launch or how much it will cost is still unknown. It's also unclear how long the title will be exclusive to the gamer-centric smartphone, but developer Mojang will be holding an event at E3 where, presumably, we'll be getting more details. Now is the time to wrap up any loose ends in your life before what little free time you have left gets buried beneath a pile of bricks and mobs -- even when your PC isn't handy. Update: If that pic of Minecraft running on the Xperia Play wasn't doing for you, good news, we've got video of the title in action after the break. [Thanks, stagueve]
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Arc getting Android 2.3.3 update next week, Facebook integration in tow
There's still no confirmation as to when it will be headed to the soon-to-be-released Verizon Xperia Play, but Recombu is reporting that at least some iterations of the phone will be getting upgraded to Android 2.3.3 next week, at which point the Xperia Arc will also get bumped up to the same version. Assuming there's no surprises in the next week, that would seem to make them the first non-Nexus phones to get the update. What's more, in addition to various Android-related updates, both phones will also be getting Sony Ericsson's so-called "Facebook inside Xperia" update, which promises to more deeply integrate your phone (including your calendar, contacts, and even music) with the social network. The company's also confirmed that the Facebook integration will be included on all future Xperia phones, and it will be headed to all Xperia models released so far this year.
