* Display: The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will have a 4-inch, 480 x 854-pixel resolution LCD screen, one of the higher-resolution displays among Android phones. The Apple iPhone 4 is no slouch in the display department however, with a 3.5-inch LCD display that has the highest resolution of any smartphone: 640 x 960 pixels. Although higher resolution, the iPhone 4′s display is considerably smaller than that of the Xperia Play.
* Operating system: The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will ship with Android 2.3, currently the fastest available version of Google’s open operating system. The Apple iPhone 4 uses Apple’s proprietary iOS4.2, which is only used on the iPhone.
* Processor and RAM: Both the Apple iPhone 4 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play use single-core 1GHz processors. Both the iPhone 4 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play have 512MB of processor RAM.
* Keyboard: Both the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and the Apple iPhone 4 have on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboards. The Xperia Play has a slide out game controller that’s compatible with the Sony PlayStation console.
* Storage Space: The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play ships with 8GB of on-board storage and has a microSD slot for memory expansion. The Apple iPhone 4 is available with either 16GB or 32GB of on-board storage, but it has no expansion slot for memory.
* Camera: Both the Apple iPhone 4 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play have 5-megapixel cameras, and both devices can record video with 720p HD capability. Both the Xperia Play and the iPhone 4 have 640 x 480-pixel front-facing cameras for video chat.
* Battery: The capacity of the lithium-ion battery in the Apple iPhone 4 is 1,400 mAh and it is not user-replaceable. The battery in the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is a 1,500 mAh lithium-ion type that can be replaced by the user.