PS Vita Specs Announced

An anonymous reader writes "Sony has announced the hardware specs for the PS Vita and the details have confirmed most fans' hopes instead of their fears. The heart of the system is an ARM-developed Cortex A9 chip with four cores and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The screen is a 5-inch OLED capacitive touch-screen (with multi-touch) and a resolution of 960 x 544. The system will include 512MB of RAM and an additional 128MB of discrete VRAM. There will be front and rear cameras capable of 60fps at VGA resolution (640 x 480)."

Re:Ooh, wow.

[jdpars]

The raw RAM number hardly matters as much as how it is applied in a phone. If Android has been filled with bloatware requiring you to root the phone to get rid of it, then a gig of RAM won't do much good. If it's efficient, half that can run games quite well. Also, look at the actual RAM of some gaming systems and you'll be surprised at how little it takes.

Re:Phones will outperform before the middle of 201

[vux984]

I just don't see the point of a standalone portable gaming device when we have phones that are running the Unreal 3 engine and

Driving games are quite bearable. A few other genres work... some puzzlers... But playing an FPS on a phone sucks donkey balls. And anything that requires more than one or two buttons is unplayable... Scrolling shooters? 2D-fighters? Platformers... Disasters all of them.

Re:Fear Confirmed: non-replaceable battery

[Luckyo]

That's about phones, and in a country where essentially no one buys a phone without a contract. It's a cultural thing, folks in USA are used to paying a shitload of money in installments, but almost nothing in front. I believe it has to do with way finances are designed to work for individuals in USA, essentially slaving them to stable income, and encouraging debt that's just barely repayable.

Go to some EU countries, or even third world and you'll see the exact opposite. That's why nokia is still the king of phones across third world - it's phones are actually honest to god cheap rather then "costs you an arm and a leg, but will cut them off slowly over 2 years as you pay its actual price".