Xperia Play
hybrid smartphone from Sony
The Xperia Play is a slider-style smartphone with elements of a handheld game console produced by Sony Ericsson. With the marketshare for dedicated handheld game consoles diminishing into the 2010s due to the rapid expansion of smartphones with cheap downloadable games, Sony attempted to tackle the issue with two separate devices; a dedicated video game console with elements of a smartphone, called the PlayStation Vita, and a smartphone with elements of a handheld console, the Xperia Play. Originally rumored to be a "PlayStation Phone", the device shed the "PlayStation" branding in favor of the Xperia brand, running on the Android operating system.
On February 13, 2011, at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011, it was announced that the device would be shipping globally in March 2011, with a launch lineup of around 50 software titles.
Hardware
The device is a horizontally sliding phone with its original form resembling the Xperia X10 while the slider below resembles the slider of the PSP Go. The slider features a D-pad in an indented area on the left side, a set of standard PlayStation buttons (, , and ) in an indented area on the right, a long rectangular touchpad in the middle, Start and Select buttons in an indented area on the bottom right corner, a Menu button on the bottom left corner, and two shoulder buttons (L and R) on the back of the device. The form has a long rectangular touchscreen, and four buttons below, for Back, Home, Menu, and Search. The device features a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a Qualcomm Adreno 205 GPU, a 4.0 in (100 mm) TFT LCD with a resolution of 854 × 480 (FWVGA) capable of 16,777,216 colors, a 5.1-megapixel camera, 512 MB RAM, 400 MB internal storage and a micro-USB connector. It supports microSD cards, in contrast to the PSP consoles, which use Memory Stick variants, and the PlayStation Vita, which uses a custom, proprietary flash storage medium.
Software
The device runs on the Android 2.3 operating system, with early prototypes running Android 2.2 "Froyo".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Xperia Play” is hybrid smartphone from Sony. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Xperia, Play and hybrid, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “hybrid smartphone from Sony” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q762020. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Xperia Play”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Xperia Play primary sources, Xperia Play archive and Xperia research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Xperia Play”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Xperia Play” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.