Mark Bridge writes:

I just wanted to have a few words about the Sony PlayStation Phone. I know I’ve been wrong about things in the past – and I have little doubt I’ll be wrong again – but I’d like to suggest a lot of people have been looking in the wrong place.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is not the PlayStation Phone. And that’s assuming the not-yet-official Xperia Play actually exists and is called the Xperia Play. Even if both of those are indeed true, I shall repeat my statement. The Xperia Play is not the PlayStation Phone. Please excuse a little sarcasm, but the clue’s in the name. In fact, given Sony’s recent announcement about the PlayStation Suite Android-based gaming platform, it’s no more a PlayStation Phone than any other Android phone. PS Suite, when it turns up at some point between now and Christmas, will put PlayStation gaming on any Android phone (running v2.3 or above) that can handle the pace.

So if the Xperia Play isn’t the PlayStation Phone, what is?

I’d like to suggest that Sony’s Next Generation Portable entertainment system (codenamed NGP) is the real PlayStation Phone. Announced just a few hours ago, it looks likely to give any of this year’s top-end smartphones a run for their money.

5-inch OLED display. ARM Cortex quad-core CPU. 3G connectivity. WiFi. GPS. Six-axis motion sensing. Twin joysticks. Front and rear touchpads. Front and rear cameras. Expandable memory. Instant messaging. Compatibility with PSP games and with titles developed for Android devices. In the shops for Christmas.

Okay, no-one’s mentioned phone calls or SMS yet – so this could be an anonymous data-only device – but, if you ask me, it’s much more like a PlayStation Phone than anything else I’ve heard about recently.