[Xperia Play General] dsswoosh:
Seriously, I love this phone. I got it 2 days ago and i can't take my hands off it.

I'm 32 years old (yea yea getting old now), and was brought up on computer games. This phone makes me remember just how good the old megadrive/genesis/snes games were compared to the (mostly) crappy indie games that we see these days. I've fondly been playing Sonic, Mario, Super Star Wars, Streets of Rage and a whole host of others flawlessly on this little beauty. It's an emulation dream come true.

The N64 emulator lags a little bit for me, but mostly it's just occasional sound skipping, it is certainly still more than playable, although the control mapping could be a little bit easier. I'm hoping a MAME emulator will be released that supports all the old mame games and not just the capcom games. (Anyone can tell me if there is one already or one coming out?)

Some fears i had for the phone before i purchased were these -

- Worried it would be too bulky

- Worried about the screen auto dim feature and not being able to turn it off

- Worried about the battery life

- Worried about the hardware being outdated before it even hit the shelves

- Well, the phone is bulkier than alot of other phones, but it is still slim enough to easily slip in and out your pocket. I didn't look at the phone before i ordered it, i just jumped in and ordered it off the net and hope it was what i wanted (or i could send it back within 7 days to get a refund). Overall i am very happy with the size of the phone. I certainly don't feel like an idiot getting it out my pocket, it looks very cool.

- The auto brightness on the screen is not all that bad. I got annoyed at first, not being able to turn the phone on max brightness, but after a few minutes my eyes got used to it and i hardly notice it anymore. It must serve a good purpose because the battery lasts a long time. I think that an official patch is definately needed though, not giving people an option to turn off auto brightness is disastrous. Saying that, more than likely i would leave auto brightness turned on, it does save battery and it is implemented excellently imho.

- Battery life is amazing. I got through 12-14 hours of gaming, browsing, and general usage + a full night withought charge on standby and when i woke up it had 7% battery life left. You can not go through 2 days with this phone though, so still you will have to charge it every night, but you can guarantee a full, proper day usage out of it without too much worries about the battery dieing.

- Hardware is a bit meh. On one hand the phone runs super smooth. And FPSE plays PS1 games super smooth, no slowdown at all. The N64 as i mentioned has a few sound skips. So the hardware does exaclty what it was designed to do. This is where it stops though. There will be no PS2 emulation, no dreamcast emulation, no xbox1 emulation. Not until the next handset gets released. This is the limits of this phones power.

Overall i think this is the best phone made to date. I don't care it hasn't got 1080p recording, i don't care the camera is only 5 megapixel. This phone owns and is easily the best phone i have ever owned to date.

Roll on the Xperia Play 2. I am now a branded fan.

edit - Just thought i would say that my phone came with a 16gb Micro SD card, 2 screen protectors (1 of them already put on flawlessly, no air bubbles or dust underneath at all, 1 spare). I have heard people only getting 8gb cards and no screen protectors, but this did not happen with my order.