Unlike the chocolate and peanut butter in Reese’s chocolate peanut butter cups, it was no accident that Snapdragon and the Xperia PLAY found themselves together. This week Sony Ericsson launched the Xperia PLAY at Verizon, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon MSM8255 mobile processor with Adreno 205 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) inside. It is the world’s first PlayStation-certified phone (and perhaps the world’s most gaming-centric smartphone). And Sony Ericsson chose Snapdragon and Adreno to power it. If you’re wondering why, check out this recently posted Qualcomm video, featuring Aaron Duke and Kim Ahlstrom from Sony Ericsson, talking about the Xperia PLAY with Snapdragon’s Adreno GPU.

The Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset and Adreno 205 GPU together provide a fun and immersive gaming experience via the very device you will want to carry with you everywhere all the time – the new Xperia PLAY smartphone. Not only does Snapdragon contain powerful graphics processing — enough to rival some in-home console systems — but it also has a lot of other valuable integrated features like video capture and playback, music playback and a 1.4 GHz CPU. The Xperia PLAY has a 4-inch 854x480 display, a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, a VGA front-facing camera, 512 MB of RAM, and is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Perhaps more importantly, the device comes with seven preloaded games. And you can download over 50 more games via Verizon’s VCAST apps store. I would say that another big reason that Sony Ericsson chose to work with Qualcomm is that Qualcomm is really into mobile gaming! Keep your eyes peeled in the coming days for more details on just how big into gaming Qualcomm has become. In the case of the Xperia PLAY, Qualcomm worked closely with Sony Ericsson not only to establish connections with some of the best mobile game developers and game titles around, but also to help game developers make sure that the games offered on the PLAY are the best they can be, using the Adreno graphics optimization tools. We’re very pleased that Sony Ericsson chose Snapdragon for the Xperia PLAY device. We’re confident you will be, too. The Xperia Play may not be as tasty as a Reese’s peanut butter cup, but I’d say it’s a lot more fun and lasts a lot longer! For more information on commercially available Snapdragon-based devices and on the Adreno graphics optimization tools, check out our developer site at developer.qualcomm.com.