Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY for Verizon Unboxing

Our friends across the big pond have been getting their game on with the first ever PlayStation certified smartphone in the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY, but now US consumers are able to experience the very same thing now that it’s available through Verizon Wireless. We’ve already reviewed the beloved gaming conscious smartphone already, but seeing that this isn’t your typical handset, we’re undoubtedly still giddy about doing an unboxing for it.

There’s nothing really out of the ordinary with the handset’s retail packaging since it follows in character to what we’ve been seeing with most Verizon devices of late, though, we’re greeted with an image of the handset upfront with barely any other useful information surrounding its sides. Inside, there’s also nothing out of character with its included goodies, which consists of the microUSB cable, wall charger, the usual set of documentation, and apparently what appears to be a 3.5mm headset adapter. Some might be confused as to why the latter is packaged along since we find a normal 3.5mm headset jack on the handset itself, but interestingly enough, it’s required when playing games since it doesn’t seem to work properly when you directly plug a pair of headphones to the handset’s 3.5mm port.



We’ve gone over the smartphone’s design extensively in our review, however, its most distinguishable aspect is by far the physical game pad that’s tucked away, which obviously comes in handy for playing games. Although it might appear to be just every bit of the version we reviewed not too long ago, Verizon’s variant actually is running the stock Android 2.3.2 Gingerbread experience – rather than the customized one from before. Needless to say that some will either be a fan of it or be extremely saddened to see losing the PlayStation-esque presentation, but nonetheless, it operates decently and offers the rich set of personalization you’d expect out of any Android smartphone at this point.




Some of its other features include a 4” LCD display boasting a nice resolution of 480 x 854 pixels, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM/ROM, Adreno 205 GPU, 5-megapixel auto-focus rear camera with LED flash, VGA front-facing camera, 8GB microSD card, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, Wi-Fi, and GPS. As for the included games, it’s the same exact seven found with the GSM version of the handset, but instead of finding FIFA, it’s swapped with Madden NFL 2011. Regardless of that, there are additional Xperia PLAY optimized games available to download via V CAST Apps. Therefore, if you’d like to learn more about the handset, you can read about it in our in-depth review of the GSM version.