Sony PlayStation Phone leaked | Expert Reviews

The first real images of Sony's purportedly planned PlayStation Phone have leaked ahead of an official announcement.

Pictures of the device, which has long been rumoured but always denied by Sony, have been posted on tech site Engadget from an unknown source, and show a device much like the company's existing PSP Go hand-held console.

The smartphone, which is shown to be running Google's Android platform, is said to be based around a 1GHz Qualcomm processor with 512MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM. The capacitive touch-screen, which will almost certainly include multi-touch support, is said to measure between 3.7in to 4.1in.

The landscape slider mechanism is similar to that found on many Android smartphones, but instead of uncovering a QWERTY keyboard it unveils a D-pad and four-button control, along with an area thought to be a trackpad for analogue control without obscuring the display.

The device will not be compatible with existing PlayStation Portable games, but instead will ship with a custom Sony storefront that allows specially-written games to be downloaded directly to the device.

The device pictured is said to be an early prototype with a few bugs still to be ironed out, with rumours placing a launch some time in 2011. Sadly, with Sony still denying the device's existence, an official time scale or any information on pricing is still unavailable.
Horrible.