Xperia PLAY delivers the smartphone functionality that the most serious power users could need, teamed with the immersive gaming experience that any gamer would want.

In portrait mode, the Android smartphone offers all the benefits that users expect from Sony Ericsson’s existing range of Xperia smartphones with best-in-class entertainment experiences, a great 5 megapixel camera, a brilliant 4” multi-touch screen and great social networking features.

However, slide out the gaming control and users enter a new world of immersive mobile gaming. The slide out game pad reveals a digital D pad, two analogue touch pads, two shoulder buttons and the four PlayStation icons: circle, cross, square and triangle. Qualcomm’s optimized Snapdragon processor with a 1Ghz CPU and ibedded Adreno GPU graphics processor deliver silky smooth 60fps play-back 3D mobile gaming and Web browsing with minimal power consumption so Xperia PLAY users can enjoy long hours of battery life and game time.

Xperia PLAY will run on Gingerbread (version 2.3), the latest version of Google’s Android platform. The Xperia PLAY will also be the first PlayStation Certified device. This means it will have access to PlayStation game content provided through the PlayStation Suite initiative, currently under development by Sony Computer Entertainment and due to launch later this calendar year.