Alexandria (VA) - Sony's mobile phone division is apparently looking at a gaming-centric phone, a market that so far has had a history of failure.

A patent from late last year shows a device that looks something like a PSP retooled to work as a mobile phone.  The screen on the candy bar style phone can flip 90 degrees to make it look more like a slim PDA.  Or, the phone can be turned horizontally to have a landscape mode screen orientation and a control set much like a handheld gaming device.

It's a risky move for Sony, a company that's already facing setbacks from a rocky start with the PS3.  Nokia lost millions of dollars on its ambitious N-Gage gaming phone project.  A similar handset from Samsung never even made it to the states, in spite of initial plans to do so.  The mobile gaming market as a whole also is still struggling to achieve universal standards, with different programming languages and unclear system specifications causing confusion for consumers.



Sony Ericsson's patent shows a couple things that offer better functionality than the gaming phones of the past.  For example, instead of automatically exiting the game, an incoming call would just cause a dialog box to pop up on the screen, allowing uninterrupted play.

Sony Ericsson is currently the fourth largest cell phone manufacturer, claiming around 8% of the global market share.

This doesn't work!

Jun 02, 2007 04:25     

I personally would rotate the whole phone to play a game with a another orientation. I would rather like to see the rotation sensors like iPhone on this one... I wonder if the thats a touch screen... But hey, how come there are three buttons on the bottom!? 4 5 3=12 Keys, I wonder if the number keys present, that's 12 12=24 and three short cut keys 24 3=27... That's a lot of keys (besides PDA phones)! And with a auto-focus 7.0 MP camera and music player, we now came up with a phone equals to "Cybershot DSC-M2 (the rotating screen DC) Nokia N-gage thickness of a brick Walkman".

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Smells like failure

Jun 10, 2007 22:36     

1. It is not ergonomic. Too much buttons in a small area. 2. Seems heavy 3. It's big. 4. PSP still rocks and uses internet. 5. PSP with internet will be able to meke voip calls and messenger. 6. If you want something grat just put a 3Gsm antenna on a PSP an you will have instant success Just... Upgrade PSP
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