PlayStation Vita: The Pre-Launch Guide
What about the guts? Everyone likes guts, right? Especially high-tech guts!
Published: February 6, 2012
We could bore you with the basic specs (and indeed they'll be listed in plain spec-speak in just a few paragraphs for those interested in that), but we'd like to at least try to break things down for the layman.
The short version of what's hiding under that flat plastic slab that peers up at you is a trifecta of ridiculously cutting-edge technologies. The first, as will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the Vita running, is the screen. OLED technology is still rather expensive -- at least in large HDTV screen sizes. The trade-off in size, however, is met with some serious advantages in color reproduction, viewing angles and power consumption. Organic LED screens don't need the normal LED or LCD backlight to effectively "shine" their colors. The result is that when when an OLED pixel isn't actively displaying a color it's effectively (though not literally) "off" and maintains as close to true black as any LED out there. It makes for deep, intense hues without wash-out or smear, and the results are... well, let's just just say there's a reason why OLED screens are so expensive.
Second to the Vita's trio of tech is the main ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor. Rather than the single core in the original PSP, the Vita functions a bit more like the PS3 (though only rudimentarily) in that it has multiple cores capable of processing tasks in parallel simultaneously. Instead of having to wait for an instruction to finish before starting the next, the Vita can queue up multiple instructions, getting far more done at a time. The result is computational power that exceeds anything else on the market currently (though that's likely to change any week now at the rate mobile technology is careening ahead), and makes for a flexible base for developers already familiar with having their games execute multiple functions at the same time on the PlayStation 3. Indeed, Sony has said the process of porting from the PS3 to Vita is fairly straightforward, though obviously not without some concessions.
One of those will, understandably, be the graphics. Though the OLED screen's 960x544 resolution is just shy of proper HD, the PowerVR SGX543MP4+ graphics card is also quad-core -- something that's rare even in mainstream desktop graphics cards and forms the third part of the tech triangle. PowerVR GPUs are particularly interesting in that, unlike most other graphics cards, they tend to only show the polygons and textures for objects that are "visible" from the final angle. Geometric or texture detail that's covered up by other objects simply isn't rendered (in the most basic terms), freeing up the GPU to crank out some remarkably efficient graphics.
Coupled with a pool of half a gigabyte (that's 512MB) of main system RAM (the same amount as the entire combined 256/256MB system/GPU RAM seen in the PlayStation 3) plus an additional 128MB of RAM reserved just for the quad-core GPU, the tech trifecta is something to be envied. In English? That means the Vita has more RAM than the PlayStation 3 (though not the same type or speed), and will scream when properly tapped by developers. Even now, the launch games (which you can read about Wednesday) are showing results simply not possible on other portables, and the eye candy is only going to get more impressive as devs come to grips with all that hardware.
And, of course, there are other little not-so-obvious goodies too, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer that all combine to give the system lightning-quick motion control that's far more akin to (and even faster than) the PlayStation Move controller than the DualShock 3s that come with the PlayStation 3. Want the full official spec sheet? Okay, we can do that too.
[CPU]
ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core)
[GPU]
SGX543MP4+
[External Dimensions]
Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
[Screen]
5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
Multi touch screen (capacitive type)
[Rear touch pad]
Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
[Cameras]
Front camera, Rear camera
Frame rate: 120fps@320x240(QVGA), 60fps@640x480(VGA)
Resolution: Up to 640x480(VGA)
[Sound]
Built-in stereo speakers
Built-in microphone
[Sensors]
Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
[Location]
Built-in GPS (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
Wi-Fi location service support
[Keys/Switches]
PS button
Power button
Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
Shoulder buttons (Right/Left)
Right stick, Left stick
START button, SELECT button
Volume buttons (+/-)
[Wireless communications]
Mobile network connectivity (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode)
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP）
[Slots/Ports]
PlayStation Vita card slot
Memory card slot
SIM card slot (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
Multi-use port (for USB data communication, DC IN, Audio [Stereo Out / Mono In], Serial data communication),
Headset jack (Stereo mini jack) (for Audio [Stereo Out / Mono In])
Accessory port
[Power]
Built-In Lithium-ion Battery,
AC adaptor
[Supported AV content]
-Music-
MP3 MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3, MP4 (MPEG-4 AAC), WAVE (Linear PCM)
-Videos-
－MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC), H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Hi/Main/Baseline Profile (AAC)
-Photos-
－JPEG (Exif 2.2.1), TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG
The short version of what's hiding under that flat plastic slab that peers up at you is a trifecta of ridiculously cutting-edge technologies. The first, as will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the Vita running, is the screen. OLED technology is still rather expensive -- at least in large HDTV screen sizes. The trade-off in size, however, is met with some serious advantages in color reproduction, viewing angles and power consumption. Organic LED screens don't need the normal LED or LCD backlight to effectively "shine" their colors. The result is that when when an OLED pixel isn't actively displaying a color it's effectively (though not literally) "off" and maintains as close to true black as any LED out there. It makes for deep, intense hues without wash-out or smear, and the results are... well, let's just just say there's a reason why OLED screens are so expensive.
Second to the Vita's trio of tech is the main ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor. Rather than the single core in the original PSP, the Vita functions a bit more like the PS3 (though only rudimentarily) in that it has multiple cores capable of processing tasks in parallel simultaneously. Instead of having to wait for an instruction to finish before starting the next, the Vita can queue up multiple instructions, getting far more done at a time. The result is computational power that exceeds anything else on the market currently (though that's likely to change any week now at the rate mobile technology is careening ahead), and makes for a flexible base for developers already familiar with having their games execute multiple functions at the same time on the PlayStation 3. Indeed, Sony has said the process of porting from the PS3 to Vita is fairly straightforward, though obviously not without some concessions.
One of those will, understandably, be the graphics. Though the OLED screen's 960x544 resolution is just shy of proper HD, the PowerVR SGX543MP4+ graphics card is also quad-core -- something that's rare even in mainstream desktop graphics cards and forms the third part of the tech triangle. PowerVR GPUs are particularly interesting in that, unlike most other graphics cards, they tend to only show the polygons and textures for objects that are "visible" from the final angle. Geometric or texture detail that's covered up by other objects simply isn't rendered (in the most basic terms), freeing up the GPU to crank out some remarkably efficient graphics.
Coupled with a pool of half a gigabyte (that's 512MB) of main system RAM (the same amount as the entire combined 256/256MB system/GPU RAM seen in the PlayStation 3) plus an additional 128MB of RAM reserved just for the quad-core GPU, the tech trifecta is something to be envied. In English? That means the Vita has more RAM than the PlayStation 3 (though not the same type or speed), and will scream when properly tapped by developers. Even now, the launch games (which you can read about Wednesday) are showing results simply not possible on other portables, and the eye candy is only going to get more impressive as devs come to grips with all that hardware.
And, of course, there are other little not-so-obvious goodies too, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer that all combine to give the system lightning-quick motion control that's far more akin to (and even faster than) the PlayStation Move controller than the DualShock 3s that come with the PlayStation 3. Want the full official spec sheet? Okay, we can do that too.
[CPU]
ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core)
[GPU]
SGX543MP4+
[External Dimensions]
Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
[Screen]
5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
Multi touch screen (capacitive type)
[Rear touch pad]
Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
[Cameras]
Front camera, Rear camera
Frame rate: 120fps@320x240(QVGA), 60fps@640x480(VGA)
Resolution: Up to 640x480(VGA)
[Sound]
Built-in stereo speakers
Built-in microphone
[Sensors]
Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
[Location]
Built-in GPS (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
Wi-Fi location service support
[Keys/Switches]
PS button
Power button
Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
Shoulder buttons (Right/Left)
Right stick, Left stick
START button, SELECT button
Volume buttons (+/-)
[Wireless communications]
Mobile network connectivity (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode)
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP）
[Slots/Ports]
PlayStation Vita card slot
Memory card slot
SIM card slot (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
Multi-use port (for USB data communication, DC IN, Audio [Stereo Out / Mono In], Serial data communication),
Headset jack (Stereo mini jack) (for Audio [Stereo Out / Mono In])
Accessory port
[Power]
Built-In Lithium-ion Battery,
AC adaptor
[Supported AV content]
-Music-
MP3 MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3, MP4 (MPEG-4 AAC), WAVE (Linear PCM)
-Videos-
－MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC), H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Hi/Main/Baseline Profile (AAC)
-Photos-
－JPEG (Exif 2.2.1), TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG
