C Spire Wireless and Sony Ericsson Move Mobile Gaming Experience into the Fast Lane with the Xperia™ PLAY Smartphone

RIDGELAND, Miss.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--C Spire Wireless, the only U.S. wireless provider that offers consumers a full suite of personalized wireless services, is celebrating the holiday season with the introduction of the perfect personalized gift for the gamer in the family – the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY Android™ touchscreen smartphone.

“The Xperia™ PLAY’s immersive gaming experience, ever-growing list of optimized games, sleek design and seamless integration with the latest Android touchscreen smartphone technology makes this a perfect gift for the holiday season.”

The Xperia™ PLAY combines the popularity of PlayStation^® Certified gaming with all the advanced features, apps and capabilities of an Android touchscreen smartphone to create the ultimate gaming and mobile broadband experience.

Powered by the Android™ 2.3 Gingerbread mobile operating system, the device comes pre-loaded with seven game titles, including Madden NFL 11 (EA Sports), Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior (Digital Legends), Asphalt 6:Adrenaline (Gameloft), The Sims™ 3 (EA), Star Battalion (Gameloft), Crash Bandicoot^® (Sony PlayStation®) and Tetris^® .

C Spire and Sony Ericsson also are teaming up to offer purchasers of the device another five free games for download from the EA Games mobile website until January 15, 2012, including Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed™ Shift, Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2, Dead Space™ and FIFA 12.

“As a company committed to offering the ultimate personalized wireless experience, we’re pleased to carry the Xperia™ PLAY,” said Kevin Hankins, chief operating officer for C Spire Wireless. “The Xperia™ PLAY’s immersive gaming experience, ever-growing list of optimized games, sleek design and seamless integration with the latest Android touchscreen smartphone technology makes this a perfect gift for the holiday season.”

“This strategic partnership with C Spire will help us meet growing consumer demand for the Xperia™ PLAY by making the advanced gaming and mobile communications device more widely available,” said Peter Farmer, head of North America marketing for Sony Ericsson. “The popularity of the Xperia™ PLAY coupled with the dependability, reliability and coverage of the C Spire network make this a must-have gift for the serious gamer.”

Customers can easily expand their video game library with more than 150 game titles optimized on the Xperia™ PLAY and available for download and purchase through the Android™ Market. Users can easily transform their smartphone into the ultimate mobile gaming device with the slide out game pad revealing a directional keypad, dual analog touch joystick, two shoulder buttons and the four iconic PlayStation^® symbol keys: circle, X, square and triangle.

Additional Features

4-inch multi-touch 480x854 screen display, up to 60 frames per second graphics, stereo speakers
1 GHz Qualcomm^®Snapdragon^® II processor with Adreno 205 GPU
5 Megapixel rear-facing camera with auto focus and dual-LED flash

VGA forward-facing camera with video recording, chat capabilities and still shots
Built-in support for Google Mobile Services including Google Maps™, Gmail™ web-based email service, Google Talk™ instant messaging service, Google Search™ and YouTube™ user-generated content website
Mobile hotspot - share 3G connection with up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices

Pricing and Availability

The Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY is available online at www.cspire.com, in all retail stores and through its telesales group at 1-855-277- 4734 beginning today for $49.99 after a $50 reward card and a new two-year customer agreement with data.

Go to www.cspire.com for more information about C Spire’s holiday offers, personalized wireless services, devices, plans and more.

About Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson is a 50:50 joint venture between Sony Corporation and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson. In October 2011 it was announced by Sony and Ericsson that Sony will acquire Ericsson’s stake in the company and that Sony Ericsson will become a standalone division within Sony Corporation. The transaction is expected to close at the beginning of 2012 and is subject to regulatory approvals. Over the years Sony Ericsson has brought together the best communication technologies with superior entertainment user experiences to create its Xperia™ line of the ‘most entertaining smartphones’ in the industry. With its global corporate functions in London, Sony Ericsson has sales and marketing operations in all major regions of the world, as well as manufacturing in China, and product development sites in China, Japan, Sweden and Silicon Valley, California. For more information, please visit: www.sonyericsson.com/press. Follow Sony Ericsson US on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SEUSA and Twitter at www.twitter.com/SonyEricssonUS.

About C Spire Wireless

C Spire Wireless is a diversified wireless communications company passionately committed to helping customers by personalizing wireless services designed just for them. The provider personalizes customers’ experience by offering apps that fit who they are, services that anticipate their needs, and rewards just for using their phone in new ways – all with seamless ease and lightning fast speed. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news/. For more information about C Spire Wireless and its products and services, visit www.cspire.com.

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