Playstation Phone Spotted in China

We’ve been following the story of the Android-powered Playstation Phone for a couple of months now and in that period we’ve seen possible names, leaked videos, benchmarks etc. Now the phone seems to have been spotted in China, complete with Xperia branding and a mysterious software launcher named Playstation Pocket.

Say hello to the Xperia Play?

The phone is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a Qualcomm Adreno 205 GPU, which would have been impressive before the slew of dual-core Tegra powered smartphones were released. Anyway, the rest of the alleged specs are as follows:

• 4-inch LCD screen at a resolution of 854x480
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• Sim slot (duh)
• micro-USB port
• microSD slot for storage expansion
• Active noise cancellation via a second microphone.
• 1,500mAh battery

While those are better specs than the PSP, it is extremely doubtful that the phone will be able to play PSP games because the phone’s processor is ARM-based whereas the PSP’s processor is based on a completely different architecture (MIPS). Unless Sony’s gone all-out with some hardcore hardware emulation, it’s very likely that nearly all PSP games will not work on this phone. Just as well then that all signs point to this device being marketed as a phone with some gaming functions rather than a gaming device with phone functions.

This is one mystery that has us all guessing

However, the existence of the aforementioned Playstation Pocket, a mysterious software launcher, piqued our interest. Though we have no idea what this application could be used for and screenshots and videos have done nothing to help, its just being there could be a glimmer of hope for those expecting a bit more than casual gaming on the device.

While you wait for the Sony Ericsson event in February at Barcelona, where this phone will most likely be launched, check out the video below.

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