Android Xperia™ Play Pros & Cons?

[The Milkman]

Well christmas is coming and I need a new phone, I have had my eyes on the Xperia Play and since I dont plan on buying a PSP and pretty sketchy about the Vita, I was wondering what you guys have to say about it. the main reason I want one is so I have a phone im not ashamed to take out in public and something to play a few moblie games on that doesnt have broken touch screen controls. (I got a iPod but I derped up the jailbreak and it runs like shit now) mainly I want to know:

1. Are there any actual PSP ports or any planned Vita ports?

2. Do the android apps work with the buttons?

3. About how long is the battery life?

4. Has thier been a (insert android term for jailbreak) on it?

5. If not, How loose is it without it?

6. List of emulators plz

 

[CarbonX13]

1) There have been plans to port PSP games to the Xperia Play, though I haven't heard or seen anything official. I could be wrong. The PlayStation Vita will be significantly more powerful than the Xperia Play, so Vita games will likely not even run on the device.
2) Some Android apps are noted to have support for the Xperia Play gamepad, not all do. Here's a list of Xperia Play supported games.
3) The battery is officially classified as 6.25 hours of 3G talk time, and just over 400 hours on standby. On regular usage, you should last a full day without issue.
4) Yes, the Xperia Play is rooted. If you're looking to pirate apps like with iOS jailbreak, rooting won't do anything. Pirating on Android does not require rooting.
6) I believe many emulators support the Xperia Play gamepad, not sure of specifics.

 

[Terminator02]

1. No and no.

2. Depends if they're designed for the buttons or not, a lot of games are designed to work with the standard d-pad, the center button, and the back button. For those games the Xperia Play's d-pad will act as the d-pad, the X button will act as the center button, and the O button will act as the back button. Also there are a few games that are designed to work with the Xperia Play, such as Minecraft Pocket Edition, Age of Zombies, and Guerrilla Bob. These games usually use the touch pads, which work fine for dual-stick shooters, but don't give enough feedback to be true substitutes for analog sticks.

3. I'm assuming you're talking about the Verizon version. It runs stock Gingerbread, and the battery life is solid, but you'll be charging it every night. It depends on your usage patterns.

4. Has it been rooted? Yes. However, the bootloader is locked on the Verizon version and the only method for unlocking it now involves paying some fine folks over at XDA-Developers.com. The bootloader being locked basically means that you cannot flash custom kernels, which are typically a big part of Custom ROMs. So basically, you can root and get full access to all root apps, such as free tethering and ad blockers, but don't expect to load up an unofficial ROM of Ice Cream Sandwich on there.

5. Void

6. You can find most of the popular emulators here.

 

[The Milkman]

Ok so, Rooting is useless? In that case about how much do xperia games cost?

 

[Terminator02]

Ok so, Rooting is useless? In that case about how much do xperia games cost?

They're just regular android market games that support the Xperia Play, the price is whatever the developer sets it as.

 

[YayMii]

If you're looking to pirate apps, you don't need root. That's not what root is for. The only reason root is compared to jailbreak is because both give you more access to the system files.
Piracy is simple on Androids. Simply look for the latest version APK file of the app you want on the internet, download it, and open it. If it's an app that needs external files to work properly (such as any of the Gameloft games, which keeps the game data in a folder on your microSD), then usually you can find those at the same place as the APK.

Also, nobody has mentioned this, but there's something coming up called the PlayStation Suite, which is a framework which some games will be made in, and these games will be released both on Android PlayStation devices (such as the Xperia Play) and on PSN for the PS Vita.

 

[Selim873]

1. No unfortunately, but PSX games do work!

2. All Emulators do, except for the Joysticks. Developers haven't really worked on optimizing, but they do work very well!

3. Pretty good. I gotta a little chart to show you what my battery goes through on weekdays.

Spoiler

6:30am - Unplugged
7:30am to 12:50pm - Text frequently and stealthily during school.
12:55pm to 1:40pm - Play games (on phone, sound muted) and talk to friends in the library. (Surprised that the librarians don't care!)
1:45pm to 2:32pm - Completely idle, Jazz rehearsal, school dismisses at 2:32pm.
2:32pm and so on - Average texting... and calling ->

Usually phone warns me for low battery around 7pm, pretty consistent on my part.

EDIT: Should last much longer if trying this, when your phone warns you, set to vibrate only, and turn off both 3G and WiFi, the warning starts at 14% battery percentage remaining, it says that on the warning, I'm going to try that since I've been going out MUCH more and away much later recently, I don't know about the battery's death, I always plug it in before it dies out.

4. Yes, rooting, but there is absolutely no need for it.

5. VERY!

6. Very useful link! http://www.xperiafor...tion-guide.html

 

[The Milkman]

Thanks guys! Anything else that the xpiria does thats handy? Like some kind of APK downloader that works on the phone? (Not asking for a source or name just a yes or no so no one gets in trouble)

 

[The_Dragons_Mast]

Yeah there are several black markets apps for android phones that you can use or you can simply just download the apk you want from the phone browser .

Also rooting isn't really useless even if you can't install a custom kernal it allows you to atleast block all those annoying ads , remove useless apps that comes preinstalled , overclock your cpu & make backups of your apps (& thier saves that you spend hours on) ,but if such things doesn't interest you then you can leave it unrooted .

 

[The Milkman]

Wow, thats pretty cool, I guess after I mess around with the phone ill see if I want to root or not, you guys sure have helped now the hard part is figuring out how im gonna convince my mom to add a smartphone to a family plan(data and all is sure to boost the monthly bill) thanks anyway, Plus rep all around