Meet the upcoming PlayStation Phone

Gadget news site engadget releases pictures of prototype Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone running Android.

Gadget news site engadget released what they claim to be the first pictures of a prototype of Sony Ericsson’s officially unannounced PlayStation Phone on Tuesday.

The device that the site claims to have sports a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and a screen of 3.7 to 4.1 inches.

The phone is a landscape slider with game controls in place of the typical QWERTY keyboard. It has a directional pad (D-pad), standard PlayStation Portable (PSP) buttons and shoulder buttons and a long multi-touch slider in between the two instead of analog sticks (or joysticks).

The rumor that Sony is coming up with a PlayStation Phone have existed since Sony entered the handheld gaming market in 2004 with the PSP. The number of rumors have increased significantly in the past year though.

One reason is that Sony has not announced a successor to the PSP in six years. The other, more important and connected reason is the fact that Apple’s iPhone has changed the game for handhelds. The iPhone has truly come into its own as a gaming device this year, with even Nintendo, the handheld gaming giant, starting to take notice.

Nintendo of America’s President, Reggie Fils-Aime, when asked by Forbes about Apple and the threat it poses to Nintendo’s dominance in the handheld gaming market, said:

“Do I think that in the near term they (Apple) can hurt us more than Microsoft? Absolutely.”

Nintendo has recently announced the 3DS, its successor to the DS, due to launch in Japan this year, being the first handheld device to support a 3D display built in that does not require those awkward glasses that come with 3D TVs. But it does not have an essential feature that the iPhone has, the phone. Also, Apple has a huge market lead in terms of devices in consumer’s hands. They sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter ending September alone.

Microsoft was also rumored to be looking at the hand-held market and only now, with the upcoming Windows Phone 7, do they have a strategy to compete in the handheld space. The Windows Phone 7 platform supports Xbox Live and games with good quality 3D graphics.

The path Sony seems to have chosen with the PlayStation Phone is definitely interesting to say the least. The device is purported to run on the upcoming Android operating system (OS) update codenamed Gingerbread.

Android is really the only competition that the iPhone has in terms of the number of users but it has lacked high quality games. With the PlayStation Phone, Sony has its eyes on the top spot of the handheld market.

Sony has responded with its typical "we do not comment on rumour and speculation" comment.

Time will tell if this is indeed the PlayStation portable that Sony has in mind and whether it can compete in the tough handheld market.

More photos of the prototype device are available at engadget.com and here.