Buying the "PlayStation Phone" in 2024

this is the Playstation phone sort of it's called the Xperia Play and when it came out in 2011 it was poised to be the perfect smartphone for gaming it had an excellent touchscreen ran Android 2.3 Gingerbread and even had excellent performance to boot however its main party trick was its sliding form factor to reveal a portable PlayStation experience I was able to grab this particular one from eBay for around 80 bucks and in this video I want to find out what this device is all about and what I can actually do with it in 2024 let's Jump Right In and here it is the Sony Experia play once again we bought this off of eBay refurbished they shipped it from China and it came in this rather generic looking box also it didn't come padded very well so I hope it was delivered in one piece fingers crossed uh not the worst uh the cable is kind of floating and we do have a charging Brak in here as well this appears to be a 15w charger usba on one side and micro USB and here it is the Experia play itself I got to say this is actually in decent quality The Edge is not showing any scratches really so that's a good sign we have a screen protection on the front yeah that is super clean hell yeah all right now the thing I really want to try out here is the sliding action ooh that is nice so there's a bit of some spring loaded action in there so it kind of just goes up on its own once you give it a little bit of force which is very satisfying now face buttons the square triangle X Circle do feel tactile though they aren't as raised as I'd like them to be though this is probably because the phone is pretty slim but the d-pad though yeah those buttons are raised and also feel just as tactile oh that is nice and because this device is so thin we don't have any physical thumb sticks but rather these touch ones which will be rather interesting to try out but without further Ado let's actually turn this thing on hey there we go ooh that's Sony Erics animation looking uh pretty dated but also uh kind of retro I like that you know what this screen does not look all that bad it's certainly held up over time and for 2011 this would have gone up against I believe the iPhone 4S which did have a retina display so something with this pixel density was not all that uncommon but take the 4in screen from the xeria play and compare it to something like a pro Max in 2024 and this whole entire phone is just screen and engulfs the Experia play Man times have certainly changed but now that we have the Experia play on what happens if we just oh okay so a game launcher appears and it looks like we have a bunch of pre-installed stuff on here so there's Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior FIFA 10 star Battalion and The Sims 3 all right I that's a very eclectic group of games now before I jump into actually whoa okay the phone suddenly shut off why I wonder if this battery is any good there was a blinking red light up top I don't know if we C that on camera but let me plug it in to be fair I don't know how long this phone was actually sitting in the box so maybe it did just die all right I'm going to let this phone charge a bit more also get some other games on here play them as well and I'll report back with my experience before we continue on with the xeria play I want to take a moment to talk about today's sponsor you know impostor syndrome is something that I've always struggled with it's like this constant voice in the back of my head that questions every decision I make and every accomplishment that I achieve it's a mental rut that can feel impossible to dig myself out of no matter how hard I try last year I was really going through it with these feelings of self-doubt I was losing sleep I was constantly second guessing myself and it was starting to take a toll on my relationships and my overall well-being and that's when I realized I needed to reach out for help talking to someone with an outside perspective someone who can help me see things more clearly and objectively was a GameChanger it allowed me to challenge those negative thoughts and to start building up my confidence again and that's where the sponsor of today's video better help comes in when you are stuck in that mental rut having access to professional support can make all the difference what I love about better help is how convenient and accessible it is you have therapy sessions via phone video chat or even messaging whatever works best for you and with over 30,000 therapists in their Network you are sure to find someone who understands what you are going through and can help you develop a plan to move forward if you are struggling with impostor syndrome or any other mental health challenges for that matter I highly recommend you check out betterhelp go to betterhelp.com Dani or select Deni at signup for a special discount off your first month of therapy don't let self-doubt hold yourself back back any longer and take that first step toward a healthier youth thanks to betterhelp again for sponsoring today's video and now back to the xeria play all right I spent a little bit of time trying out the Experia play and while I most certainly bought it for gaming it is a smartphone of the time featuring a lot of things we took for granted back in 2011 for example we have a removable back plate and Battery which is kind of nice considering that the 1500 milliamp battery in this one doesn't hold a charge all that well in fact if you see this particular Xperia Play Tethered to a plug throughout the video you know why however at the very least it's good to know that you can buy Replacements on AliExpress for around $10 I just haven't had the time to do that yet above the battery there is a full-sized SIM card slot which I haven't been able to test out since I only have a micro SIM which needs an adapter which I don't have but presumably I'd be able to connect this to Verizon over 4G but what is most important is the fact that there is a Micro SD card slot meaning you can expand from the internal storage on here which will be especially useful once we get to gaming which I will talk about in just a moment hell yeah there is a headphone jack on here remember when we didn't have to worry about phones not having those plus the Xperia Play came came from a time where physical navigation buttons were still the norm yeah software-based gestures and touch controls have come a long way in the past decade but there is absolutely something to having real tactile buttons you can actually feel in fact Slide the phone open to reveal that PlayStation style controller and you can use it to navigate around Android which is awesome now while the Xperia Play was rather big for its time with the 4-in display and considerable heft I think in some ways it feels more confident inspiring in the hands compared to the phones of today albe it feeling a bit cheapy and plasticy cheapy and plasticky words but of course the Xperia Play was more than just a smartphone it also tried to be a portable handheld gaming device as well but how does it hold up in 2024 firstly there were a handful of titles available for the Experia play natively but since it wasn't as widely adopted as portable consoles like the PSP this platform never had the opportunity to be fully fleshed out it could certainly run all kinds of android-based games of the time but most apps simply weren't coded to work with the plays built-in controller that being said where I think the potential really lied with this device was with PlayStation 1 emulation that sound never gets old also the speakers on this thing are pretty damn good to give us a little taste of what's possible here the xeria play came with a copy of Crash Bandicoot on newer models of the Experia play it came pre-installed though older ones apparently got a firmware update that loaded it onto the device which is pretty cool the performance here is pretty good it's honestly close to what you could expect from a PS vaita or a PSP when it comes to PS1 emulation however for me the real standout here has to be the controls it truly feels like you are playing on a portable PlayStation I mean go figure it is kind of like a PSP Go in terms of the form factor but since it's a bit smaller you would think that it might be slightly uncomfortable but honestly it's not it actually feels more like the perfect size especially considering that it is ultra portable and will fit in your pocket rather nice perhaps the only real hiccup that I've experienced with this controller scheme is that my touchpad doesn't work properly sometimes it doesn't register my inputs but as you can see on the emulator that the xeria play provides I do have it mapped on here to correspond on to an actual analog stick control but uh when I move around or at least try to uh it does register my inputs but not the ones that I want yep that is way better we're just going to stick to the d-pad here but honestly that doesn't really matter to me because I've read some reviews back in the day of the xeria play and one of the pain points was in fact these virtual analog sticks they just never really felt all that good oh nope nope not the TNT that's a skunk now what is interesting about playing Crash bandicot on this device is that it's not like you can just drop any PS1 ISO onto your micro SD card and have the phone recognize it the idea here was that game Publishers could optimize their titles for devices like this though inevitably this platform never panned out again due to the lackluster adoption of users and the industry but surprise surprise this never really stopped people from making the most of their Experia plays and loading their own games one popular method of getting original PlayStation games on this device is using an ISO Patcher called PS Xperia it essentially takes this original copy of Crash Bandicoot as a base and augments all of the special compatibility bits onto to standard isos and essentially turns them into Android apks that the Xperia Play can run however mileage kind of varies with this method jump into a modified version of Pro Skater 2 and I can absolutely confirm that this weird looking figure in the middle of my screen is in fact not Tony Hawk yeah man the glitching on this game is so bad and this is the case for a lot of titles if you can even get them running luckily there are compatibility lists out there that help you find out what does and doesn't work but really you're going to want to run an emulation platform such as retroarc since of course we do have the flexibility of Android users across the internet have gotten the xeria play up and running to emulate all kinds of different consoles including the SNES and Game Boy though I will say that in my own experience I think getting this phone set up for actual gaming emulation is very much a test of patience no matter what direction I tried to take this Experia Play I Was met with a lot of resistance by today's standards the Android interface on here is quite clunky I mean for God's sakes there's no proper app switcher meaning if you need to close apps you're going to have to dive into the settings and in fact you have to dive into the settings for a lot of things like toggling Wi-Fi or even changing up screen brightness this needing to hop back and forth between the tasks that you're trying to do and going into the settings app can be quite annoying especially when it comes to troubl shooting issues and to add insult to injury most of the connected apps and services on this device are broken because old Plus on top of that websites treat the web browser on here like you walked into the wrong neighborhood I don't know if you can tell but I found this whole experience rather frustrating wrestling a 13-year-old version of Android absolutely sucks and while you can do things like root your phone or Flash better firmware especially when you can spend $80 to get a decent purpose-built emulator machine or a controller grip for the smartphone that you already own die hards might not exactly like to hear it but this experience does make me wonder if the novelty of owning a Pudo Playstation phone is really worth all the trouble it could be a fun project for collectors or enthusiasts out there to sink their teeth into but for most people I think it's a tough sell chime in in the comments below what you think about the xeria play and if you happen to want to go this route and work on an xeria a play of your own I'll leave a couple of helpful resources in the description otherwise thanks for watching this video on Dany Channel and otherwise I'll catch yall in the next one

Channel: Denki

Views: 103,512

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Id: 9UHd-_SX54E

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024