Pinch me — the PlayStation Portable phone is real after all

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/10/pinch-me-the-pl.php

Raymond Wong
Oct 27, 2010
Pinch me — the PlayStation Portable phone is real after all

After years of speculation and drool-worthy fan renderings, the mythical PlayStation Portable phone finally shows its face in what are believed to be real photos of a prototype. This is not the PSP2, but a completely different beast. Sony Ericsson is going to be so pissed when it sees these shots plastered all over the Internet.

Sony Ericsson's PSP phone will reportedly run Android 3.0 and have its own marketplace for downloading apps and games. The most interesting feature about the PSP phone is that it does not have any analog nubs — instead it has a touchpad that is said to have multitouch. Sony's proprietary Memory Stick slot is gone and in its place will be a microSD slot.

The PSP phone is rumored to have a 1Ghz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM. Screen size is said to be 3.7-inch to 4.1-inch. There also appears to be a camera with an LED flash on the back of the unit. If these specs turn out to be correct, then it looks like the PSP Phone will have the muscle to compete with the best smartphones on the market such as the iPhone 4, Droid X and Samsung Galaxy S. All of those phones sport the same processor speed and amount of RAM. Engadget predicts that the PlayStation phone will be released in 2011.

Sony Ericsson's been trying hard to pull itself out of the gutter as of late with its Xperia smartphones running Android. A handheld game console phone that rivals the iPhone would make great competition, but I don't know if Sony has any steam left anymore. It's download only PSPgo was a complete failure and this thing looks just like it — only with a phone inside. Maybe using Android will help, maybe not. What do you think? Can Sony come up with a winner to fend off the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, iOS devices and those Windows Phone 7 devices with Xbox-quality games or is it about four years too late?