which was discovered after phone blogs Pocketnow and the Xperia X10 Blog began rifling through European Union trademark filings. The bloggers found that the "Xperia Play" name (which is the brand for Sony Ericsson's high-end smartphones) had been registered by a PR agency that counts Sony Ericsson as one of its clients.
Of course, the EU trademark filing doesn't specify what "Xperia Play" might stand for, leaving open the possibility that it could be the name of something other than the rumored PlayStation phone; perhaps, for example, it refers to a mobile PlayStation app store.
Most observers, however, seem to think "Xperia Play" could be the name of the phone itself, despite the fact that simply calling it the PlayStation Phone might be a better idea.
OK, so we have some hints about the name — when are we going to see the genuine article? Based on the number of leaked photos that have been circulating around the Web — dozens, it seems, with a few videos to go along with them — you'd think Sony Ericsson would be pretty far along with the Android slider phone.
There's always the Consumer Electronics Show, which is only about two weeks away, but the latest rumors indicate that we might have to wait a bit longer, with Pocket-lint citing a source (the anonymous kind, naturally) who claims the Xperia Play — or whatever it ends up being called — could emerge from the shadows at the Mobile World Congress in February, with an actual street date around April.
Sony has already announced that a PlayStation app for iOS and Android handsets is set to arrive in the near future. The app won't let you play games or remotely tap into your PS3, mind you, but at least you'll be able to burnish your collection of PS Trophies and chat with fellow gamers while you're on the go.
Late last month, the chief executive for Sony Ericcson dropped some rather large hints about a possible PlayStation phone, telling the Wall Street Journal that "there's a lot of smoke" about the handset and "there must be a fire somewhere," adding that Sony "has an extremely strong offering in the gaming market, and that's very interesting."
Rumored specs for the slider, which has also gone by the code-name "Zeus Z1," include a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor, 512MB of RAM, a microSD memory slot, all running on Android 3.0 "Gingerbread." Leaked photos of the handset reveal slide-out gaming controls, including a pair of touch-sensitive joysticks, a D-pad, and the four familiar PlayStation controller buttons (triangle, square, circle, and "X").
Source: yahoo news