This could be our first look at Sony’s canceled Xperia Play 2

Back when Sony Ericsson was still a thing, the company had launched an innovative Android device geared towards mobile gamers — the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. The device featured a sliding mechanism hidden underneath the display, which could be opened to reveal a D-pad, two touchpads to be used as joysticks, PlayStation buttons, and start/select buttons. The device was designed to play PlayStation mobile games and it was quite a hit among enthusiasts. But sadly, Sony didn’t refresh the device in the following years and the company’s gaming smartphone lineup met an untimely demise.  However, it now turns out that Sony had, in fact, been working on a second-gen Xperia Play and we now have our first look at the canceled Xperia Play 2.

As you can see in the attached images, the Xperia Play 2 prototype features a similar sliding mechanism as its predecessor. The controller features the same selection of buttons and trackpads, but buttons on the device have been slightly rearranged, it has a black and red color scheme, and there’s an additional button marked 3D.

The images in this post come from XDA Senior Member JerryYin, who is a collector of prototype smartphones based in Shenzhen, China. He claims that the device in the images is a prototype of the Xperia Play 2 and he has put it up on sale on Idle Fish, a Chinese eBay-like online marketplace.

Looking at the other images in the Idle Fish listing we can see that the Xperia Play 2 prototype also has left and right shoulder buttons on the right edge, with the volume rocker, SD card slot, and SIM card slot sandwiched in between. The device has a single camera on the back with an LED flash and the Sony Ericsson logo underneath. The device even has Android’s old touch capacitive buttons underneath the display and PlayStation branding at the top.

While Sony may have scrapped this project, I honestly wouldn’t mind the company bringing it back with current-gen hardware. With smartphone gaming on the rise and cloud gaming services gaining popularity, hardware like this could help Sony capture a significant chunk of the gaming smartphone market globally.

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Source: Idle Fish

Thanks to XDA Recognized Contributor AndyYan for the tip!

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