PSP Battery Journal

ayersrj writes "The folks over at IGN have started a "Battery Journal" in an attempt to provide us with some relevant information regarding the battery life issue on the PSP in a realistic playing environment. The first run: a little under five hours with no wi-fi. Not too shabby."

Comments

Whine, Whine, Whine

[Voltage Spike]

I'm happy with five hours, but people will still point out that the DS does better.

Why don't they make the batteries easy to swap out? This practice is not too popular (look at Pocket PCs), but it should stop the complaints.

DS does 10

[kuwan]

Nintendo claims that the Nintendo DS can last about 10 hours before it needs to be charged. I don't know whether or not this is real-world performance. It'd be interesting to see what the battery life is when doing multiplayer, wireless gaming.

--
Free Nintendo DS

interesting criteria

[fireduck]

Playing through Ridge Racers until the battery dies is probably not a good indication of how long the battery will last when you end up getting your PSP system and putting it to use for a variety of things.

Except, this is exactly the scenario I'd want tested when purchasing a portable device. I'd like to know if it will die on me when I'm flying from Los Angeles to New York. Hopefully they'll include this in future tests.

Interesting PSP observations

[thatguywhoiam]

I too have been looking around at the various 'reviews' popping up online. The PSP looks pretty nice, but everyone should keep in mind that they are not really aimed at the same audience.

The PSP is overpowered as a game machine. Obviously Nintendo knows the magic formula for handheld games is to keep it simple, innovate with the control scheme, and keep your battery life up at the expense of nearly everything else. As a pure game machine, the NDS probably wins in the long run (literally).

However - and its a big however - the PSP is not just a game machine. Sony has made some gut-wrenching design decisions (for them, anyways) to keep this thing open to its users... and the result is actually aimed more at the nascent phone game market, the GameBoy market, the portable audio and video market, and the wireless connectivity market. Its trying to carve a new niche, and this is exactly what Sony is good at.

Witness: a plain USB port with full standards-compliant access to the memory card as a drive volume. Regular folders named with things like 'photos' and 'music'. The screen - which is much better than the DS - is something I could easily see as superior against an iPod Photo. WiFi - the verdict is still out on how this will expand - but its standard, and not some proprietary version. MP3 support, also a major shift from Sony's ATRAC3 (although I guess it will play that too).

And finally let us not ignore the fact that it ships with white headphones. This can mean only one thing: invasion.

As for battery life, it looks pretty good to me, as I rarely play my PS2 for more than 3 hours (ahem) at a time... but that is personally a subjective thing. I do think its still to early to measure realistically as it will likely go up as programmers learn the tricks necessary to optimize/minimize battery drain. (Of course it might go down again as they all try to compete with Metal Gear Acid).

And finally, if you can find a plug, the game equation vs. the DS is a no-brainer if you ask me (peanut gallery: no one did.). The PSP is more capable graphically and those optical cartridges will lay waste to the tiny memory storage of a DS cartridge. The impromptu WiFiLAN party will rock with one of these.

So for me - the DS is neat, I like it. But I've never bought a GameBoy or any other portable game system because I don't want to carry just one gadget for that specific purpose. If it keeps some music, my picures (in a nice display), plays movies and really cool games, and does even a little WiFi access.. hell yeah, I'll take one.

Re:Not too shabby?

[Lumpy]

which brings me back to my idea from 10 years ago..

the charging mat/table. a simple coil in a mat or under the table and then secondary coils built in the electronics.

set the device on the table/mat and it starts charging. people would eat it up, although cellphone companies would lose money as their entire profit model is on selling new chargers, that is why they change the charger plug every 30 minutes in a production run of a phone to ensure that you have to buy all new chargers every time.

imagine if your phone, pda, and game as well as other devices that use batteries would subscribe to the charging mat/table design... throw all the items on the table and they charge.

it's technology from over 20 years ago, I wrote a paper about it for Electronics Engineering in 1991 and here we are in the 21'st century and we have more chargers than we have gadgest because manufacturers refuse to standardize.

disgusting isn't it?