February 20th, 2012 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: Playstation Vita | No Comments »
Coming Wednesday, Europe can start toying around with the Playstation Vita from Sony. Today, it is time to take a look under the hood and see if the Vita is a match for modern day tablets and smartphones.
Vita Specs
The PS Vita makes use of a 5” OLED touchscreen with a 960×544 pixel screen (that’s 220ppi). On the back of the device, a touchpad is added so gamers can play touch games on the device without getting bothered by having their fingers in front of the action. A smart move we’d definitely want to see on smartphones soon.
The whole platform is built on Sony’s new ARM-based Cortex 9 CPU which holds 4 cores. The speed of the cores has not been disclosed yet. The SoC also hold the new PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU. The fastest in its range. The SoC is backed with 512MB RAM and 128MB VRAM.
On a sensory level, the PS Vita makes use of the same Sixaxis technology found in PS3 controllers. It also holds a 3-axis compass and for owners of the 3G version, GPS. The device holds two camera’s. Both are regular VGA cams at 640×480 pixels. Nothing to be proud of really…
For connectivity, the PS Vita relies heavily on Wi-Fi. It can connect to b/g and n networks. The device also holds a Bluetooth 2.3 module with support for A2DP audio streaming. The 3G version holds a 3G modem.
The battery of the Vita will provide 3 to 5 hours of playtime. Just a bit more than Nintendo’s 3DS does. When used to watch video, it will last you 5 hours os even 9 hours if you use the Vita for music (in stand-by modus).
The Vita holds no internal memory for the consumer, nor for the developer. Games will be sold on PS Vita GameCards. Those memory modules can hold space for the games to save userdata, but Sony advices developers to make use of the memory cards consumers have to buy separately. Not only to sell off those memorycards, but also as they will enable developers to make use of DLC support and yes, in-game payments will arrive for the Vita. The sizes of the PS Vita Cards are unknown, but consumer cards will start selling at 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. Around April, Sony NL expects to have 32GB cards on stock as well.
PS Vita vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 4G
The Galaxy Note 4G has a 5.3” screen at 800×1280, beating Vita in both size and pixeldensity (285ppi). The Galaxy Note 4G runs on just two cores, but they are clocked at 1.5Ghz and can make use of 1GB RAM. The Galaxy Note 4G offers consumers 16GB of storage space, that’s 16GB more than Vita does.
PS Vita vs. Apple iPad 2
The iPad 2 runs on a dual-core 1Ghz SoC with the less powerfull PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. The 9.7” screen of the iPad 2 runs at 768×1024 pixels which results in 132 ppi, worse than the Vita. Also, the iPad 2 has just 512MB RAM. Depending on the model, you get 8GB, 16GB or 64GB storagespace. A whole lot more than Vita has to offer, but non-expandable.
So on a technical level, modern day smartphones and tablets (we didn’t compare it to the quad-core Asus Transformer Prime) are challenging the Vita already. The unique proposition really boils down to it being the ultimate handheld gaming machine… for now that is.
