Smartphones and emulation have certainly come a long way over the past decade, but even still! The Xperia Play is a fascinating device to look back at in 2024 😊

Yo I recommend dropping better help as a sponsor, look into the issues with data privacy and stuff, very well documented on UKposts. Love the content tho!

Ah, this takes me back! This was my first smartphone and honestly, it was the best for running emulators. I had it for two solid years until the sliding mechanism gave out, and I couldn’t use the controller functions anymore. The touch analogs were top-notch, seriously perfect for emulation, and it definitely holds a special place in my heart among gaming handhelds. I really wish they’d make something similar today. I'd snap it up in a heartbeat, especially with how much mobile gaming has evolved since my high school days. It was a one-of-a-kind phone console that actually delivered on its promises. Thanks for making this video; it really stirred up some good old nostalgia!.

this was my first ever android smartphone. Today, with my fold 5 and a clip-on controller I'm living the emulation dream that this phone gave me all those years ago.

definitely gunna watch this when i get home, thanks for being the best ken

Loved my Xperia Play but it there were a lot of reasons it failed. For starters the specs were dated even when it was first released. CPU was okish but it only had 512mb of ram and only that amount of storage as well. Might not sound that bad but back then you couldn't even save apps on an SD card and it was such a pain to keep that tiny storage room empty. Remember having to root the phone and mess with a lot of software just to be able to add stuff to it without constantly deleting other stuff to make space. Also the damn thing was way too expensive when it launched. It was iphone levels of pricing without the performance, screen or popularity. It got price dropped almost instantly but it was already too late. It was charging flagship levels of money for a niche dated device only a handful of people would want. Still I really liked it. Gameloft supported it quite a bit and even if their games were cheap imitations of known IPs (from Uncharted and Halo to Starcraft and CoD) they were still fun and Xperia Play was the best way to enjoy them. PS1 games also for the most part played perfectly.

You got the dream job man! You're doing great with your life!

loving the retro tech videos in the modern day. Would love to see more old tech, especially those that people still somehow use today like the ipod video. Also might wanna rethink that sponsor.

I remember back when I first got Minecraft on Android that its controls were better optimized for this PlayStation Phone than for touchscreen. XD

There was a number of android games from the play store that worked great with the Xplay controls. Shadow Gun comes to mind that ran/played really well and the Asphalt series up to a point in time. I also (I don't remember why) bought a doom emulator and played through all the Dos dooms on it. I just had to import the WAD files for what ever game. I think the touch joy sticks got a bad rap because people didn't use them properly or maybe I just got used to them, IDK, but they did work just fine for some games. The aging OS and newer options really make this phone more of a collectible then anything. I used it as a music player just outside my house while grilling for a while due to the better then average speakers (for the time). I still have mine, but it hasn't aged well. The touchscreen no longer registers, the plastic volume buttons on the side keep popping off, and the coating on the thumb controls has started to scratch off. Interestingly enough the battery seems to hold a charge better then the one in this video.

For anyone looking for this kind of form factor I would recommend the PSP go instead... Especially for EDC emulation device... It has the same form factor, extremely easy to mod, and fit in ur pocket perfectly.. The charging cable also USB compatible so you can just plug it on your power bank or ur smartphone power brick... and it can run old game up to PS1 beautifully... 👍👍👍

Omg Ken please drop the background you had in the intro here in the comments :O

That’s crazy, I was JUST looking to buy one of these after I saw your PSP vid.

The problem with touch input panels may be due to the fact that the phone is on charge. Unplug the cable and recheck

Quick feedback : please spend the extra time to do small things. Like getting a sim adapter. Shows commitment. Important to earn long term subscribers. 🙂

The pekora plush in the background lmfao 🤣

I still have mine. I went from the X10 Mini, to this one. And I loved the keyboard on the X10 for SNES emulators. But way more on this one. I still used that phone as an emulator for a bit after I upgraded. And yes... it took some getting to work. I had to root mine to make it easier. Tho I've not booted mine for a while. So no idea how the battery is doing. But today? Heck even a PSP is a better option for SNES on the go with the firmware that has now.

Bro the bruce lee game i used to play on mine was sick af. The only thing that was stupid was the notification indicator was on the very top of the phone on the power button.

I ALMOST bought one of these years ago. I went to a pawn shop and they had it. I was on iPhone with AT&T at the time but I stopped by Verizon and checked out their prices. It was roughly the same as AT&T so I told them I would come back with the phone to make the switch. Went back to the pawn shop and they had sold it.

I use this phone to play NES and SNES, as well as a couple of games from PS1, the setup is really very painful, but you know for sure that this device will not call you when you play (after all, the SIM card is in your modern phone) but if If your phone runs out of power or is broken, you can insert a SIM card and make a call or send an SMS.

I remember when this phone came out! I sold it here in Canada under the rogers network! Back then all phones was locked to there networks!

This was my first smartphone and it was freaking amazing!!! Legendary phone, still miss it today...

I wonder why all those handheld companies didnt make something like this? Well I think the slidder mechanism is gonna be expensive to make

Love this phone in concept but it was never a capable phone when it was new . Struggle to do pretty much anything but I loved it for emulator

Had it back in time and loved it. Almost never played, but it was cool 😅

I had one back in 2013. Great phone for emulation and nothing else. By the time I got it mobile gaming was looking even better so this phone wasn't able to even run newer games properly. The best feature of the Xperia Play was no doubt the physical buttons, they were responsive and felt great to press. Mine broke bc of that ribbon cable and never bothered to fix it.

Mind blowing no one else has attempted this form factor.

My dad got me this phone for Christmas, it was incredible! I loved playing Crash Bandicoot, Minecraft & GBA games such Pokémon all utilising the gamepad.

I loved my Sony Xperia Play! That phone had a lot of promising features. I wish we got a version 2 with updated specs.

Nice video 🙂

bro, i still have my xperia play and psp go. these were so niched back then. i could totally go the route of emulation but my lazy ass just didnt want to. so they been sitting in my time capsule box. i do have ff7 on my psp go lol

At this time I had a Samsung Galaxy Epic 4G. It slid out and had a full keypad with arrow keys. I LOVED that phone so much. I wish I had kept it when I upgraded. This phone reminds me of that phone a lot, but with custom keypad. I want a company to try to bring back a sliding keyboard. I feel with games as popular as they are, and phones as capable as they are, it would have some kind of market.

I wanted this so badly back in the day, such a unique gadget.

Wait the xperia play was 4g capable?

You can root the phone and update the software with a cyanogen android or some other modded android version for a better experience and can still be used today.

I remember installing snes nes and 64 emulator on them ! it was great !

got it in my teens, it was like a dream come true at that time.,,🤣🤣🤣

I had just started as a tech at verizon didn;t see these often cool machines

Love the Alpha Tauri Cap! Nice to see another F1 fan!!

I had one, I wish it had more ram, they should make a updated version

I have two of these, One from my childhood where I spent too many hours playing minecraft PE Demo haha and onther one that someone gave me that was broken. Both of them aree having problems again but I still keep them

Nostalgia

I hope those retro handheld company can try this kind of form factor.

I wish I had one of these, but it's hard to find one here in Brazil lol

PPSSPP was awesome on that thing I played so much Tekken and MK on it.

If this phone comes out with latest specs, I would buy it over any other phone out there!

They could easily revive this idea with modern insides.. it would be great

I owned this phone in my 20s. Thing was pretty dope with emulation.

It wasn't that fast. It was almost obsolete when it hit the street. It had that funky non-combined memory and not enough of it. The gaming part of it was solid and I tried to love this phone. I had to hack the colonel use a custom firmware and a bigger battery. I really wish they would try again though

i always wanted it back then but didn’t want to switch to Verizon for it

Hey review the Blackview Shark 8

I remember the other Xperia phones from this time - they were honestly awesome. Way more personality than the Galaxys of the time, IMO. The Xperia Play, though... kinda felt like some Sony exec lead one meeting about synergy, a small team was tasked with taking one of their regular phones and slapping on a slidy controller, they had one or two meetings with the Playstation team, and this total compromise of a device is the result.

I didn't remember that Ericsson was yet part of Sony phones to smartphone era. Like I just remember seeing the old phones as Sony Ericsson but then they just disappeared at least on my sight. Even as countryside boy during that time can't say much.

i have a brand new one in my phone collection and enjoy even watching it

hey, just wanted to let everyone know of a pretty serious and annoying problem with the Sony Xperia Play. I bought one years ago and loved but little did I know how fragile the ribbon cable for the screen was. so don't be sliding the screen up and down too much otherwise you might damage the ribbon cable. and to fix it, while possible it is not worth bothering with.

Crash Bandicoot is not an Analog Stick game. and Setting your controller to Analog Mode with a game that doesn't support it can result in non-responsiveness or erratic results.

You were going way too hard on the betterhelp praise. I just kept thinking "he can't be talking about betterhelp!"

I always wanted one of these phones🗿

Consider a Razer Kishi or Backbone is about the same size.

Buddy of mine had one of these and let me play on it sometimes. Got into minecraft because of that.

Official Sony PS gaming on Android coming back would be dope.

I'm happy that I found out about this phone and bought it before this video came out. Again after your review prices will go up

I miss Bushido Blade :-(

I've been saying for years that Sony needs to revisit this concept. A smartphone handheld gaming console hybrid would be massively popular, if done right, that is.

I genuinely do not understand how this form factor has not been explored more by Sony (since they own the patent for it). Specially with the industry investments in game streaming, and the overall public demand for emulation devices and external controllers for phones.

I'd say the Xperia play was ahead of its time. Phones today are great for gaming made better with controllers that are detachable.

Dont bother with better help they have so many legal problems, regarding privacy and Hippa laws

When he said gingerbread I was sent back to the good old days 😂

That particular xperia play depreciated in value by almost 100% the moment you showed that Verizon logo. 😂

I wonder if we will see a shift back to physical buttons with android phones because of the popularity of handheld devices.

Do Nintendo DS Lite next!!

i bought this in 2011, I regretted it so much (wish I had waited, and bought a ps vita instead). my current one has a fried memory card slot, which effectively makes it useless (almost no internal storage)

They actually put the first form of Minecraft android on this

Dude don't refer to something from 2011 as retro. I ain't ready for that conversation 😂

I had one when I was in school, and I used to play Minecraft Pocket Edition on the way to school.

If you wanna use a Sony handheld for Emulation, I think the best best is with the PS Vita because it can play PS Vita, PSP, and PS1 game natively and can play stuff from the NES, SNES, Game Boy/game Boy Color, GBA really well

This was my favorite phone I ever owned.

I think that it was a great concept phone. Shame that progress went in a different way. You can still buy yourself a gaming controller for an iPhone 15 pro for example. But this phone had it already built in. Gaming phones aren't the priority. Most of the flagships are about cameras. Yes, phones like S24 Ultra will handle both games and cameras. Just not in the same way, how this Sony Ericsson was prepared to do. Only disadvantage I see for this type of construction is smaller battery and maybe durability, especially if you are that type who drop the phone all the time. But this is similar for the folding phones and people quite like them despite this. Simply pity, that this type of phone never was a massive hit. Things would be more excited for gamers today with similar construction.

I'm annoyed that no one's done this like its easy money, imagine if the galaxy did this now with flagship specs it would demolish

You are doing amazing content, GO Ken!

It’s like a smaller psp go, lol. This thing would be pretty cool if Sony remade this with current snapdragon chips, good OS, and the psp emulation would be amazing as well! Knowing Sony, they probably wouldn’t lol.

I never heard of this phone

I remember having this in high school 😂

Sony should bring back this with modern specs and 18:9 display and type C charging.

I'm surprised no one tried to make this form factor / gimmick again even tho we have better hardware and more gaming phones these days

I remember getting into a street fight back in the day because of this damn phone 😂😂

If only Sony rebuilt this with modern phone hardware

I still have mine in a drawer lol

Loved this phone. It was pretty underpowered at the time of release but like mentioned, it really was the ultimate emulator phone. SNES, PS1, even Nintendo DS and some PSP games. It's a shame it came out at a time when smartphone hardware was still in its infancy, so the phone quickly became a slog to use. Wish Sony would do a modern refresh, I'd be a day one buyer!

speakers a prettyh damn good oh course dude its sony! i use a bluetooth speaker and of course i always get Sony :) cause sony make pretty damn decent speakers and i know how they do it but yeah I can hear the sound on that phone speaker and im like yup thats a sony.

For God's sake they need to bring this back to modern phones!

I remember when I first got this phone at a Verizon store only kuz it was a PlayStation phone n I still have it today, fuckin love this phone...until something happened n I lost all my media stuff lol luckily I was able too get it fixed n still can play PlayStation games on it

I recently bought my Vita. It has many "free"games on it. Dont regret it.

When you realise even this is better than the Portal 😅

This was my first phone. I remember going to the att store to upgrade my ipod touch to the iphone 4. And then i saw this. A Playstation phone? That runs ps1 games? Sold. That was back in like 2011. Been an android user since. P.s. those touch pads always sucked. Itd be cool if sony tried to make this again.

I bought one. Good idea, poor execution. I would have liked to see future revisions.

Imagine if sony partnered with htc for this phone, maybe the playstation phone and htc would still be arround

"Released around the time of the 4S which was retina!" I absolutely haaaate that. As retina has no REAL definition. Describes no resolution, describes no pixel density, it's just an apple trademarked talking point. That's like saying the Sony phones display is "Bravia". It means absolutely nothing. Lol

Did you that the Experia Play was the first device with Minecraft Pocket Edition?

Hey I don't mean to be a pain but could you help me decide on which Monitor to go with between: AOC Agon PRO AG276QZD 27" OLED Tournament Gaming Monitor and ASUS ROG Swift 27”1440P OLED DSC Gaming Monitor?