[Xperia Play General] eksasol:
Tips​

Obligatory: The sim card slot

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The sim slot for this phone have gold pins or "teeth" which acts as contact points. If you use a sim card adapter(s), as you try to remove them from the sim slot, the bottom edge of adapter will absolutely guaranteed to get stuck on the gold pins. If you try to pull harder, it will break the gold pins resulting in an broken sim slot. This does not matter if you use a new precisely cut adapter. Once it is stuck, the safest way to remove the jammed adapter is to remove the back casing of the phone (with a T6 Torx screwdriver) and use a precision tweezers to remove it, however, this is not easy either. One time I had to remove a broken piece of the adapter stuck inside the slot from the backside to not break the gold pins, not through the front.

View attachment 4936435

The best way I found to get around this is to cut away the bottom edge of the adapter(s). See image below. This will make it a bit tricky to insert the sim card, but it's not too hard. As for removing, just pull it out slowly, the sim card should come out with the adapters (if not, tweezers).

View attachment 4936437

Side note: Since AT&T already shut down their 2G network, only T-Mobile work on this phone, but they will also shut down their 2G at the end of 2020.

GPS issues

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This phone by default have very poor GPS reception so you shouldn't expect it to work. If I remember correctly, a sim card has to be inserted for GPS to work on the GSM version of this phone. Verizon R800x don't have a simcard slot and doesn't have this issue.

Try flashing this agps.patch.sonye.build.v3.1 patch in ClockworkMod Recovery to see if it helps. I wouldn't get my hope up though, GPS has always been very shoddy with old Android devices.

Installing apk without a file explorer

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If your phone don't have a file explorer installed out of the box, enable "USB Debugging" in the phone, then connect it to your PC. Use adb command to sideload apps from your PC: adb install appname.apk

Hint: If you drag an apk file from the File Explorer and drop it into the Command Prompt's window, it will automatically include the full path name for the apk file.

Android 2.3 Compatible apps

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These are free apps I collected that are compatible with Android 2.3.

(There are no downloadable paid apps.)

Google Play Store and Play services (latest Android 2.3 compatible)

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Google Play Store 6.2.02

Google Play services 10.0.84

Emulator recommendations

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CPS2: Use CPSEmu.

MAME 0.139: Use MAME4droid(0139)-1.6.1-MULTI. This is the latest version of this emulator that works on the Xperia Play running Android 2.3 without crashing. Any newer version will crash. If you log into the Playstore and install the latest version, it will crash.

PSX: I find ePSXe combined with the opengl plugin gives best performance. Make sure to enable opengl plugin inside ePSXe's options.

SNES: I find SNES9x EX non-plus version (not the plus version from the Playstore) have better performance and plays smoother. Technically the emulation is supposed to be a little less accurate, but really it doesn’t matter.

Robert Broglia emulators: I have excellent results with the “.emu” emulators by Robert Broglia. The NEO.emu version 1.5.40 have poor laggy performance on the Play. The previous 1.5.37 ran very smooth, however it is a paid app and only the latest version is available anymore.

Bloatware apps to delete

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These are apps I deleted from the /system/app folder to clear up space, but it is at your discretion to choose what to keep. You need a root capable file manager, such as Solid Explorer Classic.

View attachment 4936375

AdobeFlashPlayer.apk
brucelee.apk
chinesetextniput.apk
com.sony.playstation.ncua94900_1.apk #Crash Bandicoot
com.sonyericsson.androidapp.storefront.apk
EventStreamPluginFacebook.apk
facebook.apk
fbcalendarsync.apk
FBIAppShare.apk
FBMediaDiscovery.apk
FBMusicLite.apk
FBNotificationPublisher.apk
FBSetupwizard.apk
fifa.apk
GenieWidget.apk
Gmail.apk
GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk
Maps.apk
officesuite.apk
playnowclientarvato.apk
PlayStationPocket.apk
PostViewer.apk
SEMCFacebookProxy.apk
Sims.apk
starbattalion.apk
Street.apk
Talk2.apk
VoiceSearch.apk
YouTube.apk

Also check these folders for more preloaded apps to delete: /etc/customization/applications or /system/etc/customization/applications

Free up the second MENU button.

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This phone have two MENU hardware buttons. "keypad-zeus.kl" contains the binding for the phone's hardware buttons, located in folder /system/usr/keylayout/.

You can directly edit "keypad-zeus.kl" as a text file if you have a root capable file manager (Solid Explorer Classic). PS. It's probably a good idea to backup of this file first.

View attachment 4936379

The original binding give this phone two Menu buttons.

key 226 MENU WAKE_DROPPED

key 139 MENU

“Key 226” is the small MENU button below the Down button. I changed it to SPACE instead:

key 226 SPACE WAKE_DROPPED

View attachment 4936381

This frees up an extra button which is useful for emulators.

Reboot phone.

AC3 support for MX Player

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This MX Player codec pack (mx_aio_1.7.32.rev1) is specifically compatible for ARMv7 devices running Android 2.3. Copy this zip file to phone’s SDcard and load it inside MX Player: Settings -> Decoder -> Custom codec

Turn off Repeat mode for stock Music app "SemcMusic.apk"

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I like the stock Music app for this device, however, almost every firmware come with a version that cannot turn off repeat. I don't remember where I found this version from, but it allows turning off Repeat mode using the Menu options.

Using a root capable file manager (Solid Explorer Classic), download "SemcMusic.apk" and paste it into the folder “/system/app” overwriting the old file. (Simply sideloading will not work.)

Also make sure to fix the file’s permission back to 644:

View attachment 4936377

Reboot phone.

Android 4 ICS?

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You may have noticed that I have not mentioned Android 4 / ICS / CM9 in this guide. That's because I find the performance to be very very poor and not worth it. You can try flashing it if you wish, but you will lose much of the gaming performance.