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Playstation Phone "Zeus" Revealed

Posted by timothy on from the two-birds-one-rock dept.

tekgoblin writes with this excerpt from Tekgoblin: "A video has surfaced on YouTube which shows the new Playstation Phone now called the Zeus. Rumors had surfaced that the phone would be announced on December 9th but with this leak the rumors have now been made fact. The phone is called the Sony Ericsson ZEUS (Playstation Phone). The demo video shows the phone running Android 2.3 codename Gingerbread. The video also shows the phone with the standard Playstation buttons along with a touch pad in the center. The controller for the phone is placed normally where a physical keyboard would be."

25 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Prices and locked down? by iamhassi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All I want to know is how much the games will be, and since it's running Android will everyone be able to make games for this or will it be locked down in some manner?

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    1. Re:Prices and locked down? by larry+bagina · · Score: 3

      looks like it's an android phone with a psp emulator app. No doubt it will be locked down and you'll need to buy psp games through a Sony psp app store.

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    2. Re:Prices and locked down? by headhot · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Andriod will probably only be the boot OS. The games will run on the custom hardware. Sort of like the Sega Dreamcast, running on WindowsCE. The games were not windows games.

    3. Re:Prices and locked down? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Question: Why exactly would you WANT this? I mean really? All the OEMs have been "pulling an Apple" and trying to make the thinnest sliver of a battery known to man, and if this thing has even halfway decent graphics it WILL pull the juice, so why in the name of all that is good would you want the ability to make a call tied to whether or not you had been gaming?

      I can just imagine the kinds of conversation owners that would have this will be having, stuff like "Sorry dear I didn't get that call about your mom being rushed to the hospital, but I was playing "Super Crash Bandicoot Bust a Nut 4" and totally ran the battery dead, sorry". I mean it isn't the smartest idea to tie a device you need and use every. single. day. and have its functionality depend on whether or not you played some shooter on lunch break.

      So I'm sorry but I just don't get it. It would be different if they would put a big beefy battery on the thing so you could get a solid 12 hours of use out of it whether you gamed or not, but we all know that wouldn't make it sleek and sexy, so instead they'll put a little sliver battery that will be lucky to get 4 hours, and that is only if your game isn't any more graphic intensive than Tetris. Any heavier on the GPU and this thing will go through power like shit through a goose and who wants to spend their day either looking for a plug in or carrying a charger in your pocket just so you can make and receive phone calls? While this whole "convergence" thing is cool in theory, until we get some better battery tech or the OEMs admit that devices with a lot of functions need real batteries instead of iSlivers I just don't see the usefulness in it. Maybe you can enlighten me?

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    4. Re:Prices and locked down? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Smartphones already last less than a day under any kind of usage. This means that people who use them have learned to adapt. Most people can find a way to charge there phone at work. I keep a USB cable for my phone at work and that works perfectly. So when i return from playing on my lunchbreak i plug in and if my wife calls to say her mother is being rushed to the hospital that is fine because when i answer i am fully charged. To many people on slashdot keep talking this nonsense about "a phone that is just good at making calls". Guess what most of the population dont want that. I spend at most 10minutes a month actually speaking on my cellphone. Everything else is text or chat.

      So yes i want convergence. I want my phone to do absolutely anything and everything that any peice of portable electronics can do. I want this because im not batman and i dont wear a utility belt in order to hold a cellphone, gps, mp3 player, portable video player, camera, psp, eReader, graphing calculator,flashlight, laptop and wireless card for it. Hell i want to be able to hook up electrodes to my phone and have it act as a digital multimeter and a portable oscilloscope as well as an EMF meter, digital thermometer, Sound level meter, light meter and spectroscope.

      I also want this megaphone to be as thin as possible. I want this so i dont have a huge, non phallus shaped bulge in my pocket or massive thing on my belt messing up my silhouette and decreasing the likelihood of females wanting to have sex with me. I know this concept in particular is difficult for the slashdot horde to grasp.

      It is considerably less cumbersome and less expensive to carry 1 smartphone and if you are really worried about battery life an extra battery or usb cable.

      The cellphone that just makes calls died with saved by the bell.

    5. Re:Prices and locked down? by walshy007 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I want this because im not batman

      decreasing the likelihood of females wanting to have sex with me.

      Something tells me, both of these problems could be solved by simply becoming batman.

    6. Re:Prices and locked down? by Narishma · · Score: 2

      The main interface doesn't use Windows CE, only a few games used it. Read the last paragraph in the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast#History
      I would quote the relevant part but Chrome doesn't seem to like pasting in Slashdot's comment box.

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    7. Re:Prices and locked down? by teh+kurisu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're using the word 'would' a lot, as if people weren't already playing games on their smartphones. The largest single category in the iOS app store is the gaming section. I think we're past the point where we're asking, do people want to play games on their smartphones? Yes. Yes they do.

  2. This could actually be surprisingly awesome by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Based on App Store and Marketpace sales, I think people are itching to have a phone that doubles as a gaming device, but there's nothing that scratches that itch perfectly yet. The iPhone doesn't do the trick because it has no physical controls (touch- and accelerometer-based games are great for some genres, but lousy for many others), and Android's game library is still pretty lame.

    Of course, if anyone can screw this up, it's Sony. Their recent track record with both phones (Ericsson, ick) and portable gaming (PSPGo, double ick) is not great, so trying to do both at once could be a big bag of fail.

    Still, I'll be paying close attention.

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    1. Re:This could actually be surprisingly awesome by auLucifer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Good point. Nokia screwed it up too

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  3. Heard it before. by Pyrus.mg · · Score: 2

    Sure it can run Linux... for now.

  4. Nice video. Silent, but (mostly) clear and sharp.. by denzacar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now show me one where this smug bastard eats crow. Preferably a live crow.
    CmdrTaco can join him.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  5. I can see the legislation now... by AllWorkAndNoPlay · · Score: 2

    We are going to need to outlaw playing GT5 while driving. Word has it, playing video games while behind the wheel may distract some drivers.

    1. Re:I can see the legislation now... by neoprint · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yo dawg...

  6. Direct Youtube Links by pavon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tekgoblin was very slow to load for me, so here are some direct links to the YouTube Videos in case the site gets slashdoted.
    Video 1
    Video 2

  7. Re:carrier locked? forced data plan? GSM? CDM? by Shikaku · · Score: 2

    In this day and age, of course to the first 2.

  8. Same name as a botnet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Funny, the first thing that came through my mind when I read the name was the Zeus botnet. Is the PS phone (oh god, it also abbreviates as PSP) going to be a botnet client by default?

  9. Sony simply MUST hire SLJ to promote this... by denzacar · · Score: 4, Funny

    And I simply can't see anyone having any problem with that.

    Well... Except maybe Rupert Murdoch.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  10. Re:N-Gage, anyone? by Xugumad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The N-Gage was a badly designed device that was neither a good phone, or gaming device. Side-talking was absurd looking, and put many people off the phone. The needs to remove the battery to switch games also did not help it.

    The Zeus may not be perfect (especially as the PSP is exactly new, any more), but at least should launch as a phone that looks like a phone, with a good sized game catalogue.

  11. Re:There was a PSP emulator for Android... by rekenner · · Score: 2

    The correct initializations for the first playstation are: PS1, PSX. PSP = Playstation Portable.

  12. Now... by inglishmayjer · · Score: 2

    if only I had friends to call.

  13. Re:There was a PSP emulator for Android... by wintermute000 · · Score: 2

    yeah maybe even make the dualshock a separate accessory. Heck you can pair a PS3 dualshock with droids already, why not make a variant with a phone mount, and make the connectivity 100% perfect / seamless.

    I wouldn't mind having to carry around a separate pad if it means its a fullsized grip

  14. Obvious reason by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 4, Informative

    It isn't actually called Zeus. That's just the codename for the Prototype.

  15. So which platform gets abandoned? by grapeape · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My guess is the original PSP will stay zombified as it has been since a year or so after launch. The go is still fairly new but I cant see Sony maintaining 2 different handheld non-compatable systems, but you know that Sony isn't going to put out an android device that isn't locked down and wouldn't go through them for content...greed is too strong with that one.

  16. Re:N-Gage, anyone? by DrXym · · Score: 2
    The Zeus seems to have a fairly unconventional form factor except that instead of having a slide out keyboard it has a slide out game pad. It makes the device a little chunky but otherwise nothing extradordinary.

    The biggest issues I see it facing is how much the games cost for it. And how the PSP brand can survive if it is tied to a single android phone model from a single manufacturer. The PSP 1 platform asted 5 years (and is still limping along). Phones don't last a year before something better comes along, so what are Sony's long term plans here? What happens if Google launches a gaming platform for example.