The PlayStation Phone

There have been rumors of Sony cooking up a PlayStation phone as the true next version of the PSP (which really hasn’t changed much in the 6– yes 6!– years it’s been out), and today Engadget has gotten some pix of what exactly all this hard work from Sony has brought. And if this is the PlayStation Phone, the mobile video game wars just got a whole lot more interesting.

The phone is said to be pretty nicely spec’d, with a 1 GHZ processor, a 3.7-4.1 inch screen (somewhere in that range), full PlayStation slide out controls with a multitouch touch pad in the middle, PlayStation “shoulder” buttons (the right and left buttons), a back camera with flash (and possibly from what we can tell, a front camera as well), microSD card slot and possibly even Android 3.0 with a special Sony Marketplace for downloading games. Yeah, if this is Android’s version of mobile gaming, then Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7’s Xbox Live and Apple’s iOS Game Center look to be in for an even bigger fight for mobile gaming domination.

The device Engadget got pix of looks to be a prototype (supposedly it is still very buggy with no custom Sony interface like HTC has done with their Android phones and Sense UI. Though with what we’ve been hearing about Android 3.0, it may not need any custom software to make it easy to use), and obviously Sony has yet to officially comment on these pix and info so we’re still without solid facts or a price and release date (rumors are that we might see this before the end of this year or early next year).

We’ll of course be following this very closely, but in the meantime we wanna know– if you’re looking for a gaming phone, which of these would you go with– Windows Phone 7 with Xbox Live, an iPhone with Game Center or this PlayStation Phone?

For more pix and info see Engadget

UPDATE (12/06): More pix and info are out! See our post here for all the info.