It's a rumour that has been doing the rounds for some time now, pretty much since the day the PSP launched back in 2004 in fact.

And whilst we've seen plenty of supposed spec sheets and there have been all manner of online commentators "leaking" details of the ultimate gaming phone, until now we've yet to really see anything to totally convince us that it's on its way.

But all that has changed as Engadget has pretty much laid its reputation on the line by stating that it has seen a device that is "not a random rumour", and that it has "reason to believe that what we've heard and seen is real and coming to market".

So what has it seen exactly?

Well, it appears that Sony Ericsson is readying a PlayStation branded phone that falls within the Xperia range and runs, wait for it, Android 3.0.

So we could be looking at a next-gen Android phone that finally gets platforms acting together when it comes to gaming. Games are apparently going to be graphically on a par with the PSP and top titles such as Call of Duty and Little Big Planet should therefore be available.

You'll be able to get your games from a dedicated section within the Android Marketplace, which will initially be exclusive to the PlayStation phone, but over time will be expanded to other high-end Android devices.

The phone will be powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and will feature a big screen of at least 3.7 inches, but maybe as large as 4.1 inches. They'll also be a 5-megapixel camera on board as well.

Looks wise, the phone will have a slider mechanism where instead of your traditional QWERTY slide-out, you'll get a control pad featuring the usual PlayStation buttons, but with a touch-pad instead of a D-Pad. The phone will also include the PlayStation shoulder buttons.

It will be a black phone with a silver trim and the control pad slide out will be predominantly white.

The report suggests that we could be seeing the Sony Ericsson Xperia PlayStation phone as early as October this year.

We at Pocket-lint absolutely love the sound of the device and think that it is about time Sony extended its PlayStation branding to the mobile phone market. After all, the Walkman brand has made a very successful transformation to Sony Ericsson's phone lineup so why couldn't Sony's gaming platform do the same?

It will also be a big boost to the Android gaming range which, at the moment, seriously lags behind the iOS efforts - in terms of official releases at least, not emulators.

Roll on October we say, lets just hope that the rumours prove correct.