14 DAY TRIAL // UK-based carrier O2 has just announced via Twitter that the upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone will be available in its stores.
The announcement comes only a few hours after the Japanese-Swedish joint venture officially introduced the Xperia Play via Facebook.
O2 UK is the second carrier that confirms getting the Xperia Play, after Vodafone UK, though pricing and specific availability are still unknown in both cases.
Sony Ericsson stated the full specs sheet will be revealed on February 13th, thus information about the device's hardware and software is scarce at the moment.
However, rumors say that Xperia Play will carry a 4-inch LCD display with 854 x 480 pixels resolution, as well as multi-touch capabilities.
In terms of power, the smartphone will possibly boast a 1GHz application processor from Qualcomm with an Adreno 205 GPU, as well as 512MB of RAM, which should make certain that users will be able to play almost any compatible game available in the Android Market.
The Xperia Play will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the latest version of Google's mobile platform, and might also include Sony Ericsson's own user interface.
In terms of design, the phone tries to emulate Sony's PSP gaming device, which means that it will come with a D-Pad, as well as PlayStation-like gaming buttons.
Other key features of the smartphone may include: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, HSDPA and HSUPA, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support, a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash and GPS with A-GPS support.
O2 UK's twitted post also mentions that they loved the phone's advert that leaked last week and was shown during the Super Bowl.
It is expected that Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will debut during the 2011 Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, as the manufacturer announced a special event on February 13th, at 19:00CET.
Starting February 14, we will be there to keep you up to date with live reports on the latest product launches and presentations.
