While the name, Yivosoft Recorder, doesn’t roll off the tongue nicely, the application provides all the functionality you need for a very affordable price of $1.99. However, they have a very generous trial. You get all the features of the app for as long as you want. If you’re happy with the product, then they ask that you buy it. It’s that simple and generous. Pretty nice, right?

Yivosoft Recorder offers your typically recording features, and adds the ability to sync these files over the air to your PC using their desktop server component. They also offer the ability to trim the files and even set them as ringtones on your phone. Other features include pinning audio clips to the start screen, add images to clips, and add reminder alerts.

I really like how Yivosoft goes straight to the recording screen when you launch the app. A quick swipe to the side and you’ll be greeted with a list of your existing recordings. I’m not a big fan of how things are displayed on this page. All the needed information is there: date, time, length, and file size. However, all recordings have the same icon next to them, and if you attach a picture to the file, it adds a little icon under the details. But that icon doesn’t show a thumbnail of the image you added. So all recordings with a picture attached have the same icon. I would rather see the big play icon beside the track details replaced with a thumbnail of the attached picture. At least then you could make sense of what image is attached to the audio clip.

Tap and hold on any of the audio clips and you’ll find a nice menu of options. The Ringtone and Trim option lets you fine tune the clip to just the part that you want. And once you’ve got it just the way you like it, you can set it as your ringtone. The sliders along the bottom allow you to fine tune where your trimmed clip should start and stop. The slider allows you to crop in between the second markers. Basically, you can clip off the first half a second if you want. It’s a pretty good slider for controlling, and the play button lets you quickly hear if you’ve got the right spot or not.

The Advanced Player takes you to a bigger and easier to control screen. You’ve got the typical pause, play, forward, rewind and stop buttons along the bottom. A colorful background, and with large second counter displayed. It would be cool if I could choose the picture I wanted to display in the background here. As well, it would be nice if, when paused, I could tap on the progress bar and adjust the position in the recording. Unfortunately, you need to use the buttons along the bottom. The progress bar is just there for looks.

When it comes to capturing and editing audio files on the phone, the Yivosoft Recorder fills the needs at the right price.

First off, let’s get the availability questions out of the way. I’m writing this review based on Release Candidate of Carbon. If all goes well, the next step is releasing it in the Market Place. Hopefully there is no RC2 and you’ll be able to try it out yourself really soon.

What makes Carbon such a great twitter application? Features like: multiple Twitter accounts, Gesture support (for quick actions and replies), translations, username autocomplete, background updates, Live tiles and notifications, threaded DMs, and so much more. But perhaps one of the greatest features is that everything is available on the same screen. You don’t see a lot of windows opening. Most of the functionality is done with pivots.

When you launch Carbon the first time, you’re presented with the timeline view that will populate with the last 60 tweets in you stream. This number of tweets is configurable up to 100. This screen is pretty much what you would expect – scrolling up and down to view your twitter stream. Swipe your finger across the screen, and you’ll be looking at your mentions stream. A double tap on any tweet will kick you into the quick reply mode, or you can simply tap and hold the tweet for a list of actions like reply, quote, and retweet, that can be preformed on that tweet. Swipe your finger across the screen again, and now you’re looking at messages (DMs) and once more and you’re viewing the quickline. Quickline allows you to see any retweets of your messages, retweets to you, retweets by you, or select a list to view.

Along the bottom of these 4 main screens you have quick access buttons for creating new tweets, accessing the Carbon menu, searching, and refreshing the page. If you pull up drawer along the bottom, you will also have access to view trends (what’s trending on Twitter), go to @tweep, and accounts & settings. The really interesting one here is the go to @tweep. This will ask you for a Twitter account that you want to view. Just type in a name and it will take you right to that persons page. From here, you have access to all sorts of information like the person bio, location, and following status. You can also swipe to quickly view their timeline, mentions, friends, followers, favorites, and see any lists that they may be part of. You can also quickly tweet or DM them, and if need be, you can also report and block them.

 If you tap on a tweet in your stream, you’re taken to a new screen that shows you tweet, and if there’s a link to Twitpic or the like, it will automatically load that image below the tweet. So you don’t have to jump out of the app to see the image. If you pull up the bottom drawer on the tweet screen, you have the added ability to share the tweet over email or SMS. You can also copy the text of the tweet or even kick off a translate

Swiping on this screen takes you between the Tweep and their message. This screen is the same screen you would see if you used the go to @tweep feature I mentioned earlier. The only difference here, is that you have the individual tweet you tapped on, showing on the screen next to the users details.

If you happen to tap on a tweet that is part of a conversation, there is a new screen inserted between the individual tweet and the users details that shows you the entire conversation thread.

With the release of Mango for Windows Phone, developers have so much more that they can do with their applications. It’s nice to see that Carbon is already integrated some of those features into the product. The animated live tiles that flip between your avatar and the Carbon logo are pretty slick. Plus, you can pin the timeline for each account right to your home page. So with a single tap I can launch into the Mobile Jaw stream. If you enable the live tile updates, it will even populate the tile when there are new mentions or DMs. You can also pin the compose window on your home screen. So a single tap on that tile, and you’re able to start tweeting – quick and easy.

 If you do have multiple accounts in Carbon, the compose screen will let you tap on the account name, and quickly switch between accounts. Unfortunately, there is no way to post the same tweet from multiple accounts at the same time. You’re only able to select a single account to post messages from. However, considering how often I do something like that, and given the ability to Copy and Paste (thanks to the NoDo update!) I can quickly copy the text of my post before sending and then paste it into a new compose window so it can be sent again from another account.

Windows Phone limits you to one Twitter account. I’m not sure if there is a limit to the number of accounts you can setup with Carbon, but you can certainly see that it allows both of my accounts to be set-up, and it’s still allowing me to add another one. So it’s at least, 3 accounts.

There’s just about everything you would like to find in the settings for Carbon. You can customize and fine tune the experience to be just what you like – define the retweet style, change the number of new tweets to download, after refreshing what should have focus, and even support for things like TwitLonger, bit.ly and bit.ly Pro.

For my usage, Carbon has proven to be the most reliable, the fastest, and the easiest to use Twitter client on Windows Phone. The developers were more than happy to work with the beta group and listen to all their feedback. The end result is a really solid version 1 release that is loaded with features and functionality. Give it a try when it appears in the marketplace – I think you’ll be impressed as well.

Free Ringtones is one of the applications in the Windows Phone market place offering the ability to download ring tones directly to your phone. I’m always a little cautious of any “free ring tones” web site, and I have to admit that I wasn’t too sure about this app at first. But I decided to download it and see what it had to offer. What I found, was an app that didn’t have that slimy web site feel that so many free ring tone sites have. The app is pretty clean and works surprisingly well.

When you launch the app, the first page you see is Hot Ringtones. By default, this page will show all the most downloaded ring tones. If you tap on the Most Downloaded hot link, you can change this filter to show Featured, Newest, or Top Rated. If that doesn’t help you find some cool new sounds, you can swipe to the right and use the built-in search.

Once you’ve located a sound that you’re interested in, tap the headphone icon to listen to it, or tap the arrow to start the download process. The download will kick off on the same panoramic, so simply swipe right to get back to the Hot Ringtones page.

The only tricky part of this app was the final step. I figured that once downloaded, I was ready to use the new ring tones. That’s not the case. In order to use what you’ve downloaded, you need to swipe to the MyDownload page, and then click the Save icon beside each of the sounds you downloaded. I’m not sure what this step is actually doing, other than making it show up in the list of ring tones in the settings menu. I would prefer the act of downloading would automatically do this last step. Regardless, it’s certainly not a hard or complicated step.

At this point, you’re ready to enjoy the new ring tones. The samples I listened to all sounds pretty good. There was one sound that was a little rough sounding, but I just selected the next result in my search results and it was perfect. There is an ad floating along the bottom, but it didn’t get in my way. If you’re looking for some fresh sounds, give Free Ringtones a try – just like the name indicates, it’s free so you have nothing to lose.

Pros- Great fit, affordable price, excellent screen shield included

Cons- None

Overall this is an excellent case for your GSII, great fit and protection for a reasonable price. And SGP makes some of the best screen shields out there. I highly recommend it.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Pros- Great battery life, super fast, very thin.

Cons- 800X480 resolution is good, but not as good as the higher resolution on some other phones.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Overall I have been very impressed with the Galaxy S II. It is the first Android device I would consider using as my daily use phone over my iPhone 4. Samsung has done a great job designing a solid phone, with great features and good battery life.

Sony Ericsson has quite a few new Android phones and are carrying along the XPERIA name.  Last year’s Mini and Mini Pro did fairly well for them, so they have updated them with a slightly larger screen and outfitted them with Android 2.3.  The XPERIA Pro is fairly well specced phone that includes an 8MP camera but comes in at a low cost.

Watch this video on YouTube.

The XPERIA Pro is available from FIDO for $50 on contract.  Details are here.

The XPERIA Mini Pro is available from ROGERS for $49.95 on contract.  More details here.

The X is coming to Telus for the holiday season. We don’t have an exact date or price, but we can safely say that it will be sometime in the next two and a half months. And if the rumors are true, then you might even see before the end of this week.

Specs on the X include a 1.5 Ghz dual core processor, 4.5 inch Super AMOLED Plus screen protected by Gorilla Glass, an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash, front facing 2 megapixel camera, Android 2.3.5 running Samsung’s latest version of TouchWiz with support for resizable Widgets. It also includes NFC, Adobe Flash, video recording at full 1080p HD, 16GB internal storage, expandable with MicroSD cards up to 32GB, and a unique dual data channel. This device will actually make 2 data connections to the carriers network (of course, this has to be supported on the carrier end of things), allowing for “super fast download speeds”. Telus is advertising this as 4G download speeds – up to 42Mbps with an expected average of 7-14 Mbps.

Larger than life, just like Hercules. The Galaxy S II X has a big screen, big camera, big download speeds adding up to big potential. But how does it stack up in real world usage. Let’s find out.

Physically, this is a big device but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, it does have a super nice 4.5 inch screen. Basically, the X could eat your iPhone and nobody would be the wiser – it’s that big. However, unlike its Galaxy S II brother, the X isn’t as thin. I’m not sure what is the main cause of the extra thickness for the X, perhaps it’s related to the dual data channel, or maybe it’s the integrated NFC? Regardless of the cause, it is thicker than the regular Galaxy S II, but Samsung has spent the time to make sure it doesn’t feel large in your hands. At first glance, there was concerns about too big. But after short amount of usage, it’s all good and there is no concerns about size and shape.

The back of the Galaxy S II X is super thin and snaps in place, just like the original Galaxy S II, only larger. The only difference here is the texture. Unlike the original Galaxy S II, the back of the X has a super soft and smooth feel to it. Under the backdoor is an easily accessible SIM card slot, MicroSD slot and of course, a battery too.

The battery on the Galaxy S II X is a large 1850 mAh battery. The battery is also sporting the NFC antenna, the second device from Samsung to offer NFC, the first being the Nexus S, although in that case the NFC antenna was not part of the battery. At first, I though having the NFC antenna in the battery was an odd idea. However, after a little thought, I think it’s actually a smart design for this phone. The backdoor is so thin, that adding the antenna on the door could present a risk of breaking when removing the battery door. IT would also mean that Samsung would have to add another pin connector from the device to the backdoor in order to make the connection. At the risk of the antenna breaking and costing more, the next best thing would be be to pull it back from the battery door. On the back, at the top of the phone is your SIM card and MicroSD slot. There is very little room left over for an antenna. The bottom of the phone is all battery – adding the antenna to the battery only makes sense. It already provides the pin connectors and the space isn’t  really being used anyway. Of course, the downside is that 3rd party battery replacements might not have the antenna in them.

Telus is calling this as a 4G phone with download speeds up to 42Mbps and an expected average of 7-14 Mbps and with this dual data channel connection, you would expect some super fast data speeds. In my tests, I never saw anything above 7 Mbps. Of the 9 speed tests I did in various locations around the GTA, I averaged 4,333 kbp – or roughly 4 Mbps. In all fairness to Samsung and Telus, I am testing this on a pre-production device which could mean issues with the firmware, or even that Telus hasn’t fully enabled this dual-channel data connection that Samsung was talking about. Regardless, my peak download speed was just under 7 Mbps, and the peak upload was about 3 Mbps. Both speeds are still really amazing numbers and faster than many peoples home internet connection.

UPDATE: Ok, so I’ve finished this whole review last week. Then over the weekend, I was out picking up my daughter from a birthday party and happened to receive an email with a rather large attachment. I clicked to download the attachment and it flew down to the device. So I quickly kicked off a speed test and this time it smashed the previous 7 Mbps record and hit a peak of 10 Mbps with upload speed of 4 Mbps!!

Inside the Galaxy S II X, you’ll find Android version 2.3.5 running the version 4 of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, which so many have come to love. You will also find Samsung’s AllShare (DLNA component), Kies Air, Samsung Apps (Samsung’s own app store), Polaris Office, Social Hub, Music Hub, and the rest of the standard Google apps. As expected on most devices, the X includes the “Tethering and portable hotspot” functionality. So you can share your super fast data connection with your friends who are stuck on slower devices / networks.

I’ve included a number of screen captures showing off Samsung’s TouchWiz interface along with the features and enhancements you’ll find on this device. The first images here show the default layout of the home screens – at least how they were on my pre-production unit.

Next is the application list showing all the pre-installed applications, along with the speed test app that I downloaded to benchmark the download speeds of this device.

Good news for those of you that like docks to rest your phone in. Samsung has added an option in the settings menu that will allow you to control the source for the audio output whenever the device is docked. Also, Samsung has included the awesome Swype keyboard. Although, truth be told, I do like the default Samsung keyboard. Swype is great if you’re a one handed texter. And the motion controls – mute when device is turned upside down, tilt to zoom, etc…  All very nice additions by Samsung.

The Galaxy S II X allows you to configure your WiFi hotspot SSID name, unlike some other phones on the market that just use your device name and don’t allow you to customize it. There are no real settings for NFC, simply turn it on or off. And lastly, the AllShare (DLNA) application from Samsung. I think I’ll need to get a Samsung TV so I can really test that out.

Overall, the Galaxy S II X is an excellent phone with loads of power to handle whatever you request of it. The Super AMOLED Plus screen is fantastic to look at, and the sheer size of it makes this a great device for consuming media.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Pros- Genuine leather feels and smells great, phone can be inserted from either end, price is great, 2 screen shields are included.

Cons- No back protection is included.

Overall the Duo case is an excellent choice for those who like “sleeve” style cases. Check it out at Switcheasy’s website, or one of the many online resellers who carry their products.

The Galaxy S II smartphone will be part of Bell’s 4G line-up of devices. Theoretically you should see speeds upward of 20+ MB for download and 5+ for upload. Unfortunately, the pre-production unit that I’ve been using for the last little while has yet to get those speeds. The best I’ve seen using the SpeedTest.net app is a couple meg down. I’m guessing that Bell hasn’t enabled the 4G on my test unit.

The Galaxy S II features a Super AMOLED Plus screen for crisp, clean and bright display. An 8 megapixel camera / 2 megapixel front facing camera, 16GB internal memory,  1.2GHz processor, 116 grams, 8.49 mm thick, HDMI out using the MicroUSB port, accelerometer, 3 axis gyroscope, NFC, and USB Host, are just some of the amazing features that round out this device.

In case you haven’t heard the news – Thin is in. And the Galaxy S II is a prime example of the awesomeness of thin. Coming in at an ultra slim 8.45 mm, the GS2 is the thinnest smartphone available on the market today. It’s mind boggling to think that something so thin can be so powerful. Samsung has managed to do it without the typical trade-offs of reduced battery or memory on the device. In fact, they managed to “up the bar” by tossing in a dual-core processor, 16GB of memory, 8 megapixel camera, and the list goes on and on.

Prying off the back cover, and you do have to pry it off, will expose the nicely sized 1650 mAh battery. I routinely got 2+ days use out of the battery on this phone. During that time it was connected on cellular, with data enabled, and running 2 push email accounts. Of course, there was some gaming and other activities as well. I could easily make it 2 full days before even considering that I should charge the device. As is the case with Android, I did have once instance where the phone didn’t come close to lasting the 2+ days I had grown accustom to seeing. This happened after installing an app that quietly ran in the background chewing away at the CPU and data. Once I removed the app everything went back to normal. If you’re using the Bell Samsung Galaxy S II and you’re not seeing this awesome battery life, it’s my guess that there is some process that’s running wild on your device.

The Galaxy S II is loaded with an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash, auto-focus, and allows for full 1080p HD video recordings. Overall the camera has preformed very well. The only problem I’ve had with the camera is when I’m trying to get it to focus on an object that’s close to the camera lens. Even putting it into Marco mode doesn’t seem to work. If the object was 8 inches or less from the camera, I found that it was extremely difficult, or nearly impossible to get the camera to focus correctly. Sometimes it would give me the green markers indicating that it was focused and ready, but the screen clearly showed that it was a long way from being focused.

Cameras have been doing panoramic shots for a while. Typically they would have you line up the images and manually snap the next frame and then it would stitch the final images together. The Galaxy S II also has a panoramic feature on the camera. But with this camera the next frame is taken automatically when it detects that the next frame is in position, allowing for up to 8 images to be stitched together. While more and more cameras are doing this automatically, what truly amazed me was the speed of the stitching and how quickly the final version was displayed. From the second the last image is taken until the final image is displayed on the screen is something like 1 to 2 seconds. Clearly, the speed of the Galaxy S II is a huge advantage in getting this done so fast.

Samsung has outfitted the Bell Galaxy S II with their very own Exynos processor. The Exynos is an ARM powered dual-core processor running at 1.2GHz. Why does this matter? Well, the Exynos processor has significant performance advantages due to the support for ARM’s media processing engine. In simpler terms, it’s really fast at decoding audio and video files for playback on the device.

Speaking of video playback, I copied a 700MB AVI directly to the device – no conversion, nothing special, and the media player on the device was able to open the file and play it without issue. The video was smooth and there was never any issues with audio dropping out of sync or stuttering. After being off charge for 15 hours, and in that time playing back a video (almost 2 full hours), the battery was still at 55% charge remaining. Impressive video capabilities and impressive battery power!

Bell’s Galaxy S II is powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), but as you would expect based on the experience of the original Galaxy S, Samsung has enhanced the default Android implementation with the latest version of their TouchWiz interface. TouchWiz takes the basic Android interface and enhances it with some very cool widgets, anchored applications that appear on every home page, enhanced notifications bar with quick access to toggle Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, and the rest. But perhaps the best new TouchWiz feature is the integration with the physical device. Sounds confusing, right? It’s actually pretty simple. With TouchWiz 4.0, you can zoom in on web pages by putting two fingers on the screen and then tilting the phone up towards you. To zoom out, you tilt the phone back. It’s a very smooth process and it’s not just for web pages. You can use this to zoom while viewing pictures, or to navigate the photo gallery by simply tilting the phone from side to side. If you place the phone face down on the table it will automatically switch to silent mode.  So you can be sure the phone won’t ring and disturb you.

Another cool integration allows you to launch voice control with a simple double tap on the top of the device, and it doesn’t have to be the screen. Take the Galaxy S II and tap twice on the top of the device, right where you would plug in the headset and -poof- the voice command software takes over. Easy to launch and easy to use.

The Galaxy S II also features Samsung’s DLNA sharing app called AllShare. AllShare allows you to send video streams from your device to any other DLNA enabled device. It’s still pretty new, and I don’t have a DLNA enabled TV to test it out with. Although, it’s high on my list of things to upgrade.

Samsung has bundled a different keyboard from the standard Android version, which was less than stellar. However, they also included Swype – one of my favorite soft keyboards. So, while the default may not be great, the addition of Swype makes up for it.

When you first pick up the Galaxy S II, your initial thought may be around the physical size of the device. While it’s thin, it’s not small. After all, it does have a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus screen, and it’s beautiful. However, the larger footprint isn’t too bad. Since it’s super thin and light, it’s still comfortable to slip into a pocket and forget about it.

All things considered, you can’t go wrong with Samsung’s Galaxy S II Android powered smartphone. It has everything you could want in a device – thin, lightweight, big and bright screen, lots of power, loads of battery life, and 16GB of storage expandable by adding a MicroSD card. The physical phone is awesome. Internal, the phone is running Android with Samsung’s TouchWiz, providing a great experience, and running on Bell’s HSPA+ network so there’s plenty of speed for downloading and streaming.

The only thing that I’m disappointed with on the Galaxy S II, is the cameras ability, or lack there of, to focus on objects that are close to the lens, even when using Macro mode. I imagine that’s something that most camera phones would not be able to handle. Regardless, it’s not something you do very often, so I wouldn’t use it as a reason not to buy this phone. The Galaxy S II provides excellent value in a small, powerful, and light weight package.

Getting Physical

In case you’re not familiar with the Xperia Play, here’s a rundown of the specs. First and foremost, the device has a slide out game controller with 13 buttons and 2 touchpads. Where did you think it got the name Play from? The Xperia Play is a Quad-band phone with 850/1900/2100 for the HSPA bands. Rogers is claiming that you’ll get a whopping 14.4Mbps download speed on the Play. Of course, you’ll find the typical WiFi (b/g/n), GPS, 5 MegaPixel camera, 4 inch screen, MicroSD card support, and powered by Google’s Android 2.3.

The Play is a pretty thick phone by today’s standards. Putting it up along side the iPhone 4 or the Samsung Focus, it’s very much a thicker phone. Of course, the Play sports that slide out game controller that the other phones lack, so e can expect it to be a bigger than those non-slide devices. But how much bigger is the question. Do you recall the Touch Pro 2 from HTC? It’s was one of the last great Windows Mobile devices offered by HTC and it sports a slide out keyboard. The Touch Pro 2 is almost 2 years old now, and the Play is a hair thinner than the Touch Pro 2. I really would have liked to see the Play shave a little more off the thickness in order to have it sit better in ones pocket and to feel a little more comfortable in ones hand.

Despite the thickness of the phone, I have received amazing results for the battery on the Xperia Play. The battery problems form Sony Ericsson’s older X10 days are a thing of the past – a very welcome thing of the past. Under the battery door, you’ll find the exact same battery as the older X10 in terms of size, shape and capacity – 1500mAh. That’s where things change because the Xperia Play can easily make it through a day and then some, before it starts to complain about low battery. I’m routinely getting 36 hours out of a single change. Good luck seeing that kind of battery life with the X10.

Along the left side of the phone you’ll find the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the MicroUSB charge port. When you slide out the keyboard, these would then appear on the bottom of the keyboard. Down the right side of the phone you’ll find the left trigger button, the up/down volume rocker, and then right trigger button. As you can expect, this side of the phone will become the top of the game controller when you slide it open. The top of the phone has a power button in the far right hand side. Along the bottom front of the phone you have the 4 standard Android buttons – Back / Home / Menu / Settings. And all of these buttons are true buttons that require physcial pressure to work – which is a good thing if you tend to use the phone with gloves on. However a lot of phones are moving to the capacitive buttons that work the same way as the touch screen of the devices. The advantage here is that they require less force to work. Simply touch that location and the key is activated. A number of times I found myself pushing the buttons for a second time because either I didn’t apply enough pressure the first time, or the device missed it.

Get Your Gamer On

But none of that stuff is what you’re reading this review to find out. You want more detail about the slide out game controller. There is something to be said about having a game controller attached to your phone, as there’s no question that it makes game play that much easier. Even for the simple games, it provides a better interface for you to control the action on the screen without having to put your fingers on the screen and block your view of the game. The buttons on the game controller have a good feel to them and provide just enough movement and click to register that you’ve pushed them. In that respect it’s a great portable game controller. I was disappointed in the two touchpads on the front of the controller. These touchpads work in the same way as the 4 directional buttons but these operate the same way as the touchpad on your laptop. Unfortunately, these are considerably slower to respond than the physical keys. After a couple of attempts to use these touch keys, I gave up and switched back to the more standard, directional keys.

The two trigger buttons that I talked about earlier – the ones along the right side of the phone. I found them to be a little softer than I would have expected. They have a fair amount of travel in them, and they don’t offer the same click confirmation as the directional buttons on the face of the game controller. They also stick out a little more than I would like to have seen. I can just see one of these getting caught on some clothing and being ripped off the device.

Xperia Play photos by Kendra

In terms of games, the Xperia Play is pre-loaded with a number of links to games that you can download. Maybe a handful of those games are free and the rest cost anywhere from a couple dollars and up. It would have been nice to see more free content, or even trial content pre-loaded on the phone. That way people could get right into a game out of the box. The Xperia Play has a special section in the Android Market app that lists all the titles that work with the Play, allowing you to find new apps fairly quickly and easily.

Snap, Snap

The 5MP camera on the Xperia Play is pretty good – in fact, it did a better job than I expected in my little test. I snapped the following pictures with 3 different cameras – the iPhone 4, the Samsung Focus, and the Xperia Play. It’s not the easiest of pictures to take because there is a fair amount of light coming in from the sun just out of the picture on the right. There’s a lot of Point and Shoot camera’s that don’t handle that situation very well. Here’s the images from those 3 smartphones and I think it’s pretty clear that the Xperia Play did the best job in filtering out the excessive light and actually showing some of the green from the tree. (Click on the image to see the original picture)

Final Thoughts

The Xperia Play has a powerful Qualcomm 1GHz processor under the hood. Yet, there are times when switching between screens in Sony Ericsson’s TimeScape, or when loading games that they phone stutters or freezes for a short period of time. I’m not sure if this is a result of the enhancements Sony Ericsson made to Android for it to work with their game controller, or if it’s simply not powerful enough to provide that seamless experience that one expects when playing games and sliding between home screens.

Aside from the occasional hiccup when it comes to the speed, I think Sony Ericsson has done an excellent job with the Xperia Play. It provides a great portable gaming system, with the flexibility of smartphone. The battery life is off the charts – every manufacturer should be looking at what Sony Ericsson did on this device, it’s a welcome change when you can use your phone all day and still have enough power to last through the night and into the next day.

The Xperia Play offers an exceptional mobile gaming experience and a great all around mobile device. It’s definitely one to consider when it’s time for your next mobile purchase.