For quite a while now, we’ve been hearing rumblings about a “PSP Phone” and even more recently, a PlayStation branded tablet. According to a hot new rumor, the former may be coming, albeit in a slightly different package than what PlayStation gamers were clamoring for.
Although just last month rumors were abound about a PlayStation ‘tablet’ – featuring an Android powered half iPad, half PlayStation gaming device sporting Nvidia’s upcoming Tegra 2 processor – a new rumor has surfaced coming from a “trusted source” that Sony Ericsson is hard at work “on a project to redefine gaming on Google’s mobile platform [Android]”.
The rumor comes from tech blog Engadget, whose sources also reveal that the device is a landscape sliding smartphone, but instead of a QWERTY keyboard, there will be a D-Pad and face buttons. Instead of an analog stick, the device is said to have a “long touchpad for analog controls” along with shoulder buttons found on the PSP. Sounds lot like the form factor of a PSP go to us…
So what’s under the hood of this appealing sounding smartphone? Also according to this “trusted source”: it’ll feature Android 3.0 (codenamed Gingerbread), roughly a 4 inch display, and a 1Ghz Snapdragon CPU. On top of those pimped out specs, the device is said to be “pretty damn sexy”. Engadget was also told that the device will likely be branded as a Sony Ericsson Xperia, there will also be some sort of PlayStation branding on it as well.
All of this is certainly fathomable, as Google and Sony have been partnering on various other projects very recently. Some of the new Xperia smartphones will be releasing with Android on board, not to mention Sony and Google’s recently announced partnership which has Sony releasing HDTVs that feature Google’s upcoming Google TV this fall. Of course, this makes perfect sense from a partnership standpoint as well, as Google wants to prove Android can be a platform for gaming, which Sony is no stranger to, and Sony could use a OS boost thanks to Google’s budding Android OS.
This latest rumor has us particularly excited here at PlayStation LifeStyle, as the staff has been slowly but surely converting our smartphones over to Google’s Android, and of course, we love PlayStation. A device like this – to us and to many consumers – would be a match made in heaven.
Sadly, until Sony is ready to announce something, this will have to be chalked up to nothing more than a rumor. For more information on this rumor, hit the source link at the end of the article to check out Engadget’s source’s full details.
[Source]
