Playstation Phone prototype spotted

Calling all gamers

Photographs of what appears to be a Sony portable device with phone functionality have emerged on the Internet.

Engadget has multiple snaps of the unfinished device which it calls a PlayStation Phone and says will be be heading to market soon.

Rumour has it that the device will be powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm processor and will run Android 3.0, codenamed Gingerbread, so playing PSP games on it will be a non-starter.

The device does have the PSP's familiar triangle, square, circle and cross buttons, shoulder buttons, and a directional pad, so gaming is obviously on the cards. It also seems to have a trackpad, so a pointer-based GUI is likely.

Sony's most recent foray into portable gaming devices with the PSPgo has been less than stellar, with the Japanese giant hacking the price of the download-only portable gamer from £225 to £160 on the back of poor sales.