Before the ROG Phones and Black Sharks, there were the gaming phones of yesteryear such as the Nokia N-Gage and Sony Xperia Play. Rather than being performance-focused like the current-gen ones, the older handsets took it almost too literally by trying to amalgamate portable gaming and mobile phones. And yes, that idea didn’t go well.
It goes without saying that the older gaming phones didn’t see many successors due to their failure in the market. One example is the Sony Xperia Play, which was the company’s first and only gaming smartphone. Or is it?
Apparently, Sony (then Sony Ericsson) may have dabbled in the idea of releasing a successor to the device, but never made it past the prototype stage. This is evident from a post by XDA member JerryJin who shared images of an allegedly fully functional Sony Xperia Play 2 prototype that somehow ended up being part of his collection.
Based on the photos provided by the user, the device features a sliding mechanism hidden underneath its display. When pulled out, the panel would reveal PlayStation-esque face buttons and D-pad, two touchpads that function as thumbsticks, as well as four smaller buttons including Select and Start. On the opposite side are two shoulder buttons, volume rocker, SD card slot, and a SIM card slot.
The alleged Xperia Play 2 sports a display featuring large forehead and chin bezels (common for phones back then) with a single front-facing camera on top, a matte black body, and a single main camera on its back. Unfortunately, JerryJin did not provide any information on the phone’s specifications.
While full-fledged gaming oriented Xperias no longer exist, it would be interesting to see Sony reintroduce this approach with current generation technology – especially with the rise of smartphone games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile. However, seeing that the company had realised its past mistake with the original Xperia Play, it is very unlikely that we’ll ever see a new iteration to this series at all.
(Source / Images: XDA)
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