Overview
The PSP was designed by Shin'ichi Ogasawara (小笠原伸一?) for the Sony Computer Entertainment subsidiary of Sony Corporation. Early models pre-installed with 1.xx firmware were made in Japan but in order to cut costs, Sony has farmed out PSP production to non-Japanese manufacturers, mainly in China for units pre-installed with firmware version 2.00 and above. The unit measures 170 mm (6.7 inches) in length, 74 mm (2.9 inches) in width, and 23 mm (0.9 inches) in depth, and has a mass of 280 grams (a weight of 0.62 lb) including the battery. The Samsung (previously Sharp) branded TFT LCD screen measures 110 mm (4.3 in) diagonal with a 16:9 ratio and a 480×272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colors. It has four possible brightness settings, the brightest of which is disabled in all official firmware versions unless on A/C power. Additionally, hidden brightness settings can be enabled when using Custom Firmware.
The PSP uses a drive compatible with Sony's proprietary Universal Media Disc format. Use of the drive increases battery drain by approximately 10% and the system has been criticized for having very slow data transfer speeds, translating into load times of more than two minutes in total for some games. However this has been improved with the redesigned Slim & Lite PSP which has faster loading times, according to GameSpot's "Sony PSP Slim Hands-On Report".
Despite its movie and music playback capabilities, the PSP has primarily gaming-oriented controls (as opposed to the controls typical to television remotes or MP3 players): two shoulder buttons (L and R), the PlayStation, start and select buttons, a digital 4-directional pad, and an analog 'nub' which is slid rather than tilted. There is also a row of secondary controls along the underside of the screen, for controlling volume, music settings (either switching the audio off and on in games or selecting different equalizer presets), screen brightness, and a "Home" button for accessing the system's main menu. Pressing the Home button while doing anything except playing a game will bring up the XMB, which theoretically allows for multitasking; however whatever the user was doing is cancelled upon accessing anything else, except in the latest firmware release that can display pictures and play music simultaneously.
The PSP's default battery life varies widely depending on application from less than 3 hours while accessing a wireless network and having screen brightness on its highest setting to more than 11 hours during MP3 playback with the screen turned off. An extended-life 2200 mAh battery will increase this by approximately 20%. A sleep mode is also available that uses minimal battery power to keep the system's RAM active, allowing for "instant on" functionality. A system in sleep mode (with a fully charged battery) has been shown to lose an average of only 1% battery life per 24-hour period. The PSP is equipped with a two-pin docking connector immediately below the AC adapter jack for easy drop in charging using a docking station that was to be sold separately for the PSP-1000 series. However no such dock was ever released by Sony. The two-pin docking station charging contacts are absent from the PSP-2000 and later versions.
On October 1, 2009 (November 1 in Japan) Sony released the PSP Go, a redesigned version of the PSP. The PSP Go features a sliding design, allowing the screen to slide up past the main controls. The PSP Go lacks a UMD drive, instead containing 16GB of internal memory on which games are stored.
Read more about this topic: Play Station Portable Hardware