It's hard to believe that what we're looking at is real -- but we assure you, the picture above is in fact the PlayStation Phone you've long been waiting for. As we reported back in August, the device you see is headed into the market soon, likely boasting Android 3.0 (aka Gingerbread), along with a custom Sony Marketplace which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform. The device snapped up top (and in our gallery below) is sporting a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (a chip similar to the one found in the G2, but 200MHz faster), 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and the screen is in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches. Looking almost identical to the mockup we hit you with this summer, the handset does indeed have a long touchpad in the center which is apparently multitouch, and you can see in the photos that it's still bearing those familiar PlayStation shoulder buttons. For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards.

The particular model in these shots is still in prototyping mode. As such, the unit doesn't have a custom skin (not even SE's Timescape design seen on the Xperia devices), and is said to be rather buggy. We're digging into more facts as we speak, but it's likely that much of what we reported earlier is still accurate, and though the device could still be headed for a 2010 release, 2011 is looking much more realistic. Still, there's a lot of time between now and the holidays... so keep your fingers crossed!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/26/t...station-phone/


I think we all know what this will mean. Android is gonna go BOOM on games.!!! I MEAN BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! But I think the specs will be a bit better. Maybe a little more RAM.

What if Playstation games only play on the Playstation phone, and are not available to the other Android phones?

If that's the successor to the PSP, Sony has totally missed the mark... I'm getting a 3DS (Didn't they learn anything from the N-Gage?)

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

If that's the successor to the PSP, Sony has totally missed the mark... I'm getting a 3DS (Didn't they learn anything from the N-Gage?)

I think that the N-Gage was just a little too ahead of it's time. It tried to do things when the tech just wasn't there, such as internet gaming, and picking up games online as well.

That being said, if Sony can make a phone that really is great, which judging by the specs seems to be doable, and they couple that with their own style of gaming, I think it could be a great piece of technology. Will I buy one? Absolutely not, after my experience with Sony.

Being an Android user, this also makes me very happy, especially if they can integrate some of the games into Android as a whole.

If all else fails, it can't be worse than the PSPgo... Can it?

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

If that's the successor to the PSP, Sony has totally missed the mark... I'm getting a 3DS (Didn't they learn anything from the N-Gage?)

the thing is that Symbian wasn't as open to change as Android is. If they want, this will become one really epic device. Keyboard attachment plz

Originally Posted by aaront

What if Playstation games only play on the Playstation phone, and are not available to the other Android phones?

What is the installation extension on Android: Apk
How do normal people extract and recompile APKs : apktool

How can Sony make the games unextractable? Dunno really, there are many geniuses that will be able to port stuff over. Maybe Sony's considering making Android its actual gaming platform, that would mean every single game on this would be available to all users using a hi-end Android phone, more consumers for the games. Win for Sony.

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

If that's the successor to the PSP, Sony has totally missed the mark... I'm getting a 3DS (Didn't they learn anything from the N-Gage?)

No, it's just a phone. Sony has been keeping any and all details on the psp2 under wraps, mainly due to the fact that the psp was pirated and modded to bits and pieces.

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

If that's the successor to the PSP, Sony has totally missed the mark... I'm getting a 3DS (Didn't they learn anything from the N-Gage?)

The 3DS is waaay better in my opinion - The ability to see 3D images without using those stupid glasses sounds amazing. I'm just hoping developers are able to use 3D in a cool way, and not just simply have some things pop out. Don't know if they can do much, but it could be really cool (maybe solving puzzles?).
I don't think it will be that big of a success. The iPhone is pretty successful as a gaming device, but as of now it only seems to be good because of all the phone games being sold (like Flight Control, Angry Birds), games that are played generally for a couple of minutes per time.
Maybe with the introduction of the Unreal Engine it could change, that seems to have a lot of potential.
My other gripe with it is the battery life. Assuming they sell similar games that the PSP offers (i.e., longer games), using the online store, using wifi, and receiving calls and the like, it seems like all these would really use up the battery life. This is of course assuming that the battery life is like a standard phone.
Finally, no joystick/nub??!? At least they have that slide panel...

Originally Posted by Willmountain

If all else fails, it can't be worse than the PSPgo... Can it?

Even in the best case scenario this is a niche device, A niche device with a high price tag, that can't play PSP games, and will likely not get PSP2 games either. This may be able to fail worse than the Go did.

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

Even in the best case scenario this is a niche device, A niche device with a high price tag, that can't play PSP games, and will likely not get PSP2 games either. This may be able to fail worse than the Go did.

If Sony wanted to provide backward compatibility they would only need to port the existing PSP OS to this phone's hardware and dual boot with Android.

Originally Posted by Afzal

If Sony wanted to provide backward compatibility they would only need to port the existing PSP OS to this phone's hardware and dual boot with Android.

The task is harder than you make it out to be, a 1GHz platform will not be able to emulate a 333MHz one purely with software (especially if it's still backgrounding it's phone functionality). The PS3 is running an 8 core 3.2GHz chip and it still has trouble emulating quite a few PS2 (~300MHz) games purely via software.

One of the largest reasons Go failed was because of the ridiculous lack of support that Sony provided for it- this seems a bit more resistant to that, but it could still break the system if Sony doesn't offer real support. Or if they make it ridiculously overpriced... but they wouldn't be stupid enough to do that after the PS3, would they?

Even if no one can figure out how to make the Sony games available on other phones, the success of this phone would still mean a larger demand for third party games, a lot of which will be available for other Android phones (hopefully).

Originally Posted by Marlowe

but they wouldn't be stupid enough to do that after the PS3, would they?

*Points to PSP Go*

At least the PS3 had a reason to be expensive, they made the Go expensive just because they could...

True enough.

Alright, fingers crossed that they don't make the same mistake 3 times in a row! (I'd almost certainly never buy it regardless, but I would like more Android games...)

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

*Points to PSP Go*

At least the PS3 had a reason to be expensive, they made the Go expensive just because they could...

The Go is a joke.. I don't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea...

The PS3 at least got nice price slashes as they continually removed bells and whistles, though many people were not happy about this. Frankly I was super bummed when I found out my ps3 wasn't backwards compatible with my ps2 games. But for the hardware inside of it the ps3 is actually very well priced. In fact it's so well priced that the us military likes to makes super computers out of ps3s, which has led to some pretty interesting lawsuits..

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

The task is harder than you make it out to be, a 1GHz platform will not be able to emulate a 333MHz one purely with software (especially if it's still backgrounding it's phone functionality). The PS3 is running an 8 core 3.2GHz chip and it still has trouble emulating quite a few PS2 (~300MHz) games purely via software.

Read carefully, I didn't say "emulate". I said dual-boot. I meant that Sony port the existing PSP backend/frontend/whatever to this phone's hardware at it'll run natively (not over Android) but as a separate OS on the phone.

Much similar to what I can do with booting Eclair AND Froyo on my one phone with both installed in different locations. The ease of switching won't be an issue since both will be able to provide booting into the other OS if this is implemented, I doubt Sony will do that but let's see.