The Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY, which is a dedicated gaming phone, marks Sony Ericsson’s attempts to give the customers a mini PSP (PlayStation Portable) experience out of a smartphone, as well as the company’s dependence on its hugely popular PlayStation brand for regaining some of its lost mobile market share.

Powered by Android 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ version, the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY comes with a custom UI and gaming controls; with the key attraction of the handset being its slide-out gamepad that gives the users the feel of a PSP controller.

The retail box containing the Xperia PLAY – which measures 119 mm x 62 mm x 16 mm; and weighs around 175 grams – includes an 8 GB memory card; a charger with detachable USB cable; and earphones. The handset will be available in two colors – white and black.

Some of the other notable features of the Xperia Play include 4" LED-lit LCD with pixel dimensions of 480x854; a 5-megapixel camera; 400MBs of RAM; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; accelerometer; and proximity sensor. In addition, the handset boasts a 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, along with an Adreno 205 GPU based on the Snapdragon chipset.

Even though the handset appears somewhat underpowered for high-end graphics and games which need dual-core processing, it does have some highly impressive multimedia and usability features.

Finally, for attracting avid gamers from the very outset, the Sony Xperia PLAY comes pre-installed with some extremely additive games, including FIFA 10, Bruce Lee, Star Battalion, and The Sims.