14 replies to this topic

[toptenmaterial]

I am thinking about getting an Xperia Play, mainly for playing the massive amount of available Android apps with a real keypad. Does anyone here have one? Are the controls good, or is it an arbitrary combination of the d-pad and touch controls? Can it run emulators better than it's PSP cousins? Lastly, if I just purchase the unit alone without any contract or phone service, can I still use wifi to buy Android games? Thanks.

[madmax2069]

Seeing the specs its a low mid range phone at best. There are so many better Android phones out there then this, heck a Huawei M886 Mercury is better.

Edited by madmax2069, Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:24 PM.

[toptenmaterial]

madmax2069, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:23 PM, said:

Seeing the specs its a low mid range phone at best. There are so many better Android phones out there then this, heck a Huawei M886 Mercury is better.

does that one have a keypad? thanks.

[emkay]

Universal device for "Android" based gaming... I have already made a thread for ...



http://www.atariage....6-c64-of-today/

Edited by emkay, Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:53 PM.

[toptenmaterial]

emkay, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:53 PM, said:

Universal device for "Android" based gaming... I have already made a thread for ...



http://www.atariage....6-c64-of-today/

Thank you for the link. What really excited me about the Play is the gamepad, though, as I find that touch controls really aren't suited for gaming.

[Rex Dart]

Well, anything that supports bluetooth gamepads... has a bluetooth gamepad.
But yeah, I'm still hanging on to my Nokia E71 because it has actual buttons. Separate controllers & touchscreens don't make for the best gaming.

Edited by Rex Dart, Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:31 PM.

[Animan]

I was actually very close to getting one, but after trying it and a few other phones in the AT&T store, I went with a Windows Phone 7.

But, the Xperia Play was pretty good. I tried Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot, and a few other games on it, and I loved the control scheme it had. Very well designed.

Edited by Animan, Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:42 PM.

[toptenmaterial]

Animan, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:42 PM, said:

I was actually very close to getting one, but after trying it and a few other phones in the AT&T store, I went with a Windows Phone 7.

But, the Xperia Play was pretty good. I tried Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot, and a few other games on it, and I loved the control scheme it had. Very well designed.

What do you suppose the emulation power is vs psp? the play has far more ram.

[Animan]

toptenmaterial, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:45 PM, said:

Animan, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:42 PM, said:

I was actually very close to getting one, but after trying it and a few other phones in the AT&T store, I went with a Windows Phone 7.

But, the Xperia Play was pretty good. I tried Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot, and a few other games on it, and I loved the control scheme it had. Very well designed.

What do you suppose the emulation power is vs psp? the play has far more ram.

Crash Bandicoot ran just fine on the Xperia Play, although it did feel just a dab slower than it did on the PS1. Been a long time since I played the original, though.

Edited by Animan, Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:08 PM.

[emkay]

toptenmaterial, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:23 PM, said:

emkay, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:53 PM, said:

Universal device for "Android" based gaming... I have already made a thread for ...



http://www.atariage....6-c64-of-today/

Thank you for the link. What really excited me about the Play is the gamepad, though, as I find that touch controls really aren't suited for gaming.

Depends on the point of view.
The Touchpad has "cheap" mechanical contacts, and it misses the "feel" of a real gamepad.
Touch controls never "break" and seem 100% accurate.
Only problem: standard Phones have a too small display. So, if you use the touch controls, you don't see the game anymore
The Note has the "right" screensize.
And, well, I'd really liked to have such a "touch controller" , instead of a joystick, back in the 80s.

[madmax2069]

toptenmaterial, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:45 PM, said:

Animan, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:42 PM, said:

I was actually very close to getting one, but after trying it and a few other phones in the AT&T store, I went with a Windows Phone 7.

But, the Xperia Play was pretty good. I tried Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot, and a few other games on it, and I loved the control scheme it had. Very well designed.

What do you suppose the emulation power is vs psp? the play has far more ram.

Just put it this way, a PSP's CPU runs at 222mhz by default but can be pushed to run at 333mhz (it has a secondary CPU called the media engine which has very limited use for anything other then media functions, it to runs at the same speed as the main CPU) so mainly everything uses the main CPU to operate, very little homebrew takes advantage of the media engine because its not documented too well. the PSP struggles to do N64 emulation, the PSP 1000 has 32mb ram, the PSP 2000 and above has 64mb ram. The PSP 2000 can do better at emulation then the PSP 1000 can due to more ram alone. but being that they both have such little ram some emulation is just not possible.

the Xperia Play has a single core that runs at 1ghz, it has 512mb ram. from what i understand it can easily do N64 emulation. the Huawei M886 Mercury has a single core running at 1.4ghz and has 512mb ram, it too can do n64 emulation quite easily (it can emulate better then the Xperia Play due to the faster CPU speed) . most android phones can spank a PSP when it comes to any form of emulation. and if you look at a high end Android phone they usually have dual core CPUs and around 1gb ram, they are even more capable at emulation.

Emulation depends on a few things. 1. it depends on how well the emulation software is written, 2. it depends on the speed of the device, the device doing the emulation has to be on a order of magnitude faster then the system its emulating, 3. more ram the better, 4. if the OS is buggy and slow, it will impact the performance of the emulation.

Edited by madmax2069, Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:32 AM.

[toptenmaterial]

A lot of very interesting information here.

@madmax: so, by the logic you've provided, would the PS Vita be a better value for emulation? and can android apps be purchases and played on a non-android device (like the Vita)?

I'm thinking that the Play is about $400 and the Vita is about $250. The physical gamepads are what attracts me to them rather than touch controls.

[madmax2069]

toptenmaterial, on Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:31 AM, said:

A lot of very interesting information here.

@madmax: so, by the logic you've provided, would the PS Vita be a better value for emulation? and can android apps be purchases and played on a non-android device (like the Vita)?

I'm thinking that the Play is about $400 and the Vita is about $250. The physical gamepads are what attracts me to them rather than touch controls.

If and when the Vita gets hacked it would be better at emulation then the android phones. From what i understand is that any App on the android market only runs on Android devices unless that App gets ported over to another device (which happens quite a lot).

[rockman_x_2002]

If you're in the market for an Android phone, I'd honestly hold off for a few more months to see if there are any Tegra 3 based phones in the pipe. If so, those things should blow anything else completely out of the phone.

As for emulators, given a fast enough phone (and especially a bluetooth controller), most emulators work just fine. NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy especially. GBA, N64 and PS1 work well but there are some exceptions. Have not tried other systems yet.

Do know that for Android phones, however, if you want an emulator that will load and save to savestates you'll have to shell out a little bit (exception: SNES9X, which is always free by its license). Usually this is reasonably priced. And as always, there are other ways to get Android apps if you know where to look.

Edited by rockman_x_2002, Tue Jan 24, 2012 8:16 PM.

[emkay]

rockman_x_2002, on Tue Jan 24, 2012 8:14 PM, said:

If you're in the market for an Android phone, I'd honestly hold off for a few more months to see if there are any Tegra 3 based phones in the pipe. If so, those things should blow anything else completely out of the phone.

As for emulators, given a fast enough phone (and especially a bluetooth controller), most emulators work just fine. NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy especially. GBA, N64 and PS1 work well but there are some exceptions. Have not tried other systems yet.

Do know that for Android phones, however, if you want an emulator that will load and save to savestates you'll have to shell out a little bit (exception: SNES9X, which is always free by its license). Usually this is reasonably priced. And as always, there are other ways to get Android apps if you know where to look.

Looks like : Forget Tegra 3 for mobile phones.
Except , you want to have it continously wired to a power supply... or wear an extra bag for an akku.

The Devices seem to be managed to use very low power in "standard mode" .... But things like the extended graphics features and the full quad core with "out of order executing" will nuck your Akku out in less than 30 minutes.
NVIDIA seems to get crazy, searching to go ahead on that market. Particular this nonsense of using "out of order execution" to put in a processor that has already 5 cores.... well .. multiprocessing is more effective in speed/power consumption. You might know, with Intel Chips it is a difference of 1 to 10 in power consumption, if using "out of order execution" , but the gain in speed is some percentage. And it was a logical path with single core CPUs.