Unfortunately I don’t get to do reviews here, I just can’t afford the toys. The people at PCMag aren’t as unfortunate. They have got their hands on the damn powerful VGN-SZ791N, and they really liked it. They gave it a hefty 4.5 out of 5 circles. It even earned the Editor’s Choice branding. Unfortunately, even the best can’t run Crysis, with a lousy frame-rate of 6 at 1024×768.
For the compete review, click over to PCMag.
People have a misconception about the current state of technology. There has been a move of the last 50 years of trying to put as many things into one device as possible. An example could be the clock radio (which works well) or the Gas Powered Toolbox (they took stupid and added danger to it). I think the hype surrounding the PSP Phone is a good example of how merging devices could quite possibly work if made correctly, but chances are will fail horribly.
How many people reading this own a mobile phone with a camera? Do you also own a digital camera? Chances are you said yes to both, and with good reason. 1. Why would you take pictures with your phone when you know they will turn out crap (fixed lens, with tiny pinhole to let light in)? 2. Your phone has a rated 5 hours of talk time. Now remove the battery life required to use you camera frequently and what do you have? You have a phone with shitty pictures accompanied by shitty battery life.
What has all this got to do with the marvellous PSP Phone? The PSP gets like 3-5 hours depending what you are doing on it (videos or games). Add the phone functions to the mix and it will cut it down considerately. You sit on the train, play your PSP Phone, then make a call to work saying you are running late, then message that girl from the club who said if you come 10 feet from her she will call the cops, and what you are left with is not much battery life. That doesn’t even include the pirated Lost episodes (or Scrubs if you have taste), and your music library (which is completely legitimate).
It seems to be about the device that do everything. Your mobile can already play games, and surf the net, watch videos and play music. When you actually watch your battery disappearing you will understand what I mean.
There are a lot of points I can use to further display a distaste for the PSP Phone, but I would miss the positive possibilities of the system. The PSP Phone could say, feature some incredible battery, OLED screen and a Cell processor that together will bring you a new generation of mobile goodness. The chances of that happening are about as high as the chances of Hillary Clinton becoming the next President (won’t I look silly if she wins).
Sony are talking about doing the iPhone thing with the touch screen that can change depending on function. Has anyone tired running emulated games on an iPhone with touch screen controls? Utter crap is all that can be said for it. How do you emulate a joystick on a touch screen, without giving you big freaking blisters?!.
The PSP can’t sacrifice anything more if it wants to compete against Nintendo. If it loses screen size, it will fail. If the controls get any more acquit it will fail. If the games take longer, run slower or look worse, guess what will happen? It will fail. Keep them separate, and sit with me while we watch N-Gage fail once again.
The title pretty much says it all, except the date, which is April 15th. Ohh, it will cost $US54.99. Now what do I write to make the article more informative and fun? I got nothing, sorry people.
For more info (like you need more), click over to Kotaku.
Sony are actually putting a pretty good deal together with this one. You get the 80GB PlayStation 3 (not sure if it is being redesigned without the backwards compatible chip or if it is the same old), a copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 (you were going to buy it anyway) and a DualShock 3 controller. You can get all that for $US499, though you will have to wait till June 12. The question is, will it arrive at that price in Australia? I would have to say no Larry.
For more info, click over to Kotaku.
Those Bluetooth enabled DAP’s we saw a few days ago, are now being priced for the US market. They are priced competitively, with the 8GB (NWZ-A828K and comes with DR-BT21G Bluetooth wireless headphones) going for $US270 and the 16GB (NWZ-A829) going for $US320. Isn’t so bad, with it being $US80 cheaper then similar iPod Touch, but without a touch screen it is so last generation.
For more info, click over to Engadget.
It surprises me that companies haven’t made Bluetooth a standard feature in their ranges of portable entertainment devices (PMP, DAPs, MP3 players)? Sony haven’t added it to their whole range of players, but they have added it to two spunky (yes, I said spunky) new DAP’s. The two offending players are the 16GB NW-A829 and 8GB NW-A828.
The players also feature 2.4-inch display, FM radio and video playing capabilities. It can play MP3, WMA, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, SONY PCM, AAC, HE-AAC audio files plus MPEG4 and AVC video files. The battery is up to Sony’s impressive standards, and gives you 36 hours with Bluetooth off and 15 hours with Bluetooth on.
Look wise the players are clean and small, at only 9mm thick. The players will be priced $US354 for the bigger and $US260 for the smaller. They are in Japan only at the moment, but you can expect them to spread like wild fire.
For more info, click over to Sony. (it is in Japanese)
I’m sure Sony has its reasons for making the slightly awkward PSP. For me personally it hurts to play games for too long (over 2 hours), which turns me off the device. Some genius has made a incredible mock-up of what he would have liked the PSP to be, or perhaps what the next generation PSP should look like.
I love the overall design, and the controls look nice, except for the position of L1 and L2 (look closely, but they are located on the side). The dual joysticks are featured, and the ability to slide the screen down when you want to just watch movies is awesome.
Unfortunately it is just a mock-up at the moment, and the chance of the device ever becoming real is pretty slim. I will keep wishing and hoping and maybe the Sony fairy will grant my wish. Read the rest of this entry »
To start I better introduce the upcoming phone from Sony Ericsson. The XPERIA X1 (so many X’s) is the first stab at a Windows Mobile by Sony Ericsson and from the look of it, it will be an impressive device. It has a 3-inch wide VGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display, 3.2 megapixel camera (with LED flash), A2DP Bluetooth, aGPS, WiFi, 400mb internal memory and a microSD slot (no M2 slot?). It also features a QWERTY keyboard, which slides out in an ark fashion.
The reason I am attracted to such a device, is because I was a big Sony Clie fan. They were a damn good PDA, made solid and had great features. If the XPERIA series of mobiles can have the PDA functions the Clie had, with good wireless features and a build quality, this will definitely be a killer device. The only little thing that worries me, is this isn’t made by SE. The company who actually make this beautiful device, is no other then HTC, who seems to make most companies Windows Mobiles (they made the Treo’s you know).
No prices or reviews as yet. I will keep and eye open, and will get you an update as soon as there is one.
For the press release, slide over to Sony Ericsson.
This is a break through that pirates worldwide will love to hear about. What is the news? There has been success in running backup Playstation 3 games on a “PS3 Test” development machine. The better news is, they were able to play games from internal and external (USB) HDD’s.
There are a few little things to remember before being able to do this of course. These include stripping the games of encryption, patching them, and remastering to get them to load. Not something many people without know how can do.
The good news for non-know-how’ers (I made it up, but I think it works) is there will surely be nice pirates out there who will happily place pre-hacked games on torrent sites (that will then be taken to court) for everyone to leech. It has taken over a year, but eventually the hackers always win.
For more info, click over to Engadget.
I already talked about the price drop of PS3 dev kits last year. This year it seems the price drop will be repeated, this time for the PSP development kits. Wonder if this will cause an over due influx of PSP games?
For more info, click over to Joystiq.