I found what turns out to be a rather obvious workaround in the end. Didn't notice that in the advanced Gametel settings you can remap keys! So, changing from the back key and remapping in FPSE gives me a working emulator

Aha! According to the xperia play dev instructions, the following needs to happen: Differentiating between the Circle button and Back key In order to differentiate between the Circle button and the Back key, which use the same key code, the developer needs to check whether or not the ALT button is e...

To reply to myself, it looks like my issue is related to the use of a CM9-based ROM on my android phone (see this search). If I find a fix for those of us on these ROMs I'll post back here.

Many thanks for the reply :) According to Gametel , the controller uses the same key-mappings as the Experia Play , which sends KEYCODE_BACK (I assume the same as the hardware back button) to the circle. When going to 'define hw buttons' I assume what's happening is FPSE just assumes that I'm actual...

I'm having this problem at the moment, with the latest (paid) version of FPSE from the Android market. Any advice? It's making my Streetfighter Alpha combos very tricky