We get about one of these stories a month but they’re not usually from a source that’s as easily trusted as Engadget. According to the tech blog there are plans afoot for Sony Ericsson to release their first Android (correction: first since the Xperia… oops!) powered (that’s Google’s mobile operating system) device. Said device is supposedly going to feature the latest Android OS, a 1Ghz SnapDragon processor and a new way of implementing analogue controls.
The landscape slider will apparently feature a screen around four inches in size which slides over to reveal PSP D-Pad and four face buttons. Shoulder buttons are said to be present and, instead of the often-maligned analogue nub there is said to be a long touchpad area. The device is pitched as having a 5 mega-pixel camera which may not be final. According to what Engadget are calling “a trusted source” (trusted but not revealed), the device will run Gingerbread (which is Android OS 3.0) and feature PlayStation branding.
This sounds a little bit suspect to us but perhaps that’s simply because we’ve seen so many rumours of a PSP2 or a PSP Phone that we tend to take them all with a healthy pinch of salt now. It’s certainly one of the most plausible instances of this particular rumour (coming from such a respected source) that we’ve seen in a while and if it is a hoax then it’s been put together by some people who know what they’re talking about. To put it bluntly, we just can’t call this one either way so we suggest that you all treat the story with optimistic scepticism until we hear official confirmation.
Here’s the (very rough) photoshopped mock-up Engadget have done:
AcidCrashX
I like having a Phone and a PSP, dont really want them combined into 1 item, the battery life would completely suck
BadBoyBoogie
Yeah, you’d probably need to charge it at least twice a day!!! ;)
cc_star
Apple have done great work with the iPhone4’s battery so I see no reason as to why other devices can’t compete, particularly as they’ll most likely have a larger form factor than the iPhone4
Mikiyaru
1ghz wont be enough for sony. Double it.
cc_star
1ghtz is more than plenty particularly with the advancements in gpu’s and ram. By comparison the PSP’s main processor runs at 222mhz I think and the graphics core runs at 111mhtz, although it may have been overclocked in a software update I can’t remember.
Also, battery says hi
Mikiyaru
well with the size and thickness i would expect a massive battery life. My phone has a 1GHZ processor and its hardly like a hot knife through butter.
jimmy-google
My phone life is great if I’m not using wifi or making calls. The PSP on the other hand barely lasts 4 hours of play. Battery life would be a big issue to overcome.
Bladesteel
1. Comparing clock frequencies directly between different processor architectures doesn’t work. It all depends on how much the processor can get done each clock cycle. Is there anyone that knows enough to tell us how snapdragon (ARM) and PSP processor (MIPS) compare?
2. If they want any kind of backward compatiblity the processor will have to be capable of emulating the MIPS processor. That adds overhead and will require more of a PSPhone.
3. A quick googling of the emulator scene for android reveals that you “need” 1Ghz to emulate the PS1 (that ran at 33Mhz) smoothly. No way it can handle 222Mhz PSP. (The reason PSP can play PS1 games are they are both MIPS processor family)
4. PSP has gpu integrated into the CPU, but also has a reprogammable DSP chip that need to be emulated too.
5. When the PSP runs a game it can unload everything else. For a PSPhone I’d expect most of the functionality to be available still, at the very least accepting incoming calls and sms . That means a PSPhone will need specs good enough to run the game AND the phone OS at the same time.
If the specifications are correct a PSPhone won’t be backwarsds compatible. I expect that this will merely be a playstation branded android phone with game buttons, possibly with xmb-like menus. But for game it’ll be starting from scratch.
Mikiyaru
that mockup cant be anywhere near the finished product. I have an Android Phone (HTC Desire) and with all the stuff turned on like that theres no way you could be at full battery :)
gideon1451
I’m presuming this would lack an UMD drive?
MiguelX69
That HAS to be fake. Look’s very photoshopped. Just look at the design of the phone, and then the “PSP Part”. The PSP Part is more rounded that the phone. It looks like the bottom part of the PSP Go!, with the analog and other buttons removed, and a normal phone put over it.
3shirts
Step 1: Read the last line of the article
Step 2: Feel deep shame
Pemberton_
Beat me to it by a minute.
MiguelX69
I do feel ashame’d. (sad face).
gazzagb
This basically looks like a PSPgo with a touch screen. I reckon it could work very well with 3G and online gaming.
jimmy-google
The problem I see with a PSP phone is the menu system. Do they drop the XMB, have the option to switch between XMB and a standard menu or add the phone sections to the XMB.
To be a true PSP phone it needs to take a lot of the aspects that makes the PSP a PSP and the XMB is a fairly major one.
cc_star
Piracy!
I can’t see any games for a PSPhone running from within Android as the whole system is extremely easily pirate-able, and it would be highly inefficient for a phone to have 2 OS’s, and even if it did have an Android OS & a Game OS there would be a back door for pirates to breach the DRM of any games from within the Android OS system.
Sure there may not have been much attention over apps from the Android marketplace being pirated, but if titles like Assassins’ Creed or God Of War (and the like) were to appear than the piracy rates would soar from the current 70% level (for some recorded apps) to unprecedented levels
So I call bullshit, unless Sony don’t want to get ANY 3rd party devs on board