[Off-topic] klau1:
PSV Review (WiFi):

Rough Draft Copy, just to jot some points down, will organize and revise later, mostly about Vita Pros and Cons, not a game experience review

Pros:

- Great HW quality, solid feeling dual joy-sticks, better than its predecessor

- Quality screen OLED 5” 960x544 (I think OLED has become common place going forward since 2011, where the prices of OLED have fallen enough to be affordable on sub ~5” screens.)

- Responsive touch screen (Capacitive) (Popularized by the iPhone, Capacitive touch screens have become common place for brand name devices for the pass 2-3 years)

- Responsive Gaming action, no lag felt during game play in all games including Wipeout, StarDust Delta (though it’s the least you can expect from a custom tailored game SW and HW solution, unlike generic solutions like Windows, Android solutions where hardware resources available on the device are unknown to the SW developer)

- Lots of hardware controls (Gyro, Accel, and your regular HW buttons)

- Light Weight, easy to hold for extend periods of time (on the flip side, this could mean small battery, and explain the 3-5 hr battery life, since the battery is almost always the most physically dense thus heavy component of a system)

- Loud enough speaker (when not covered by finger)

-CONs:

- Hardware: The SGX543CPU is from 2009 (probably reasonable for a $250 device)

- Hardware: No GPS (probably reasonable for a $250 device)

- Packaging: Typical Sony package, bare essentials, no free bonuses like cheap sleeve common with other manufacturers

- Hardware: Backtouch screen is not 1:1 with the front, due to the Sony sticker offsetting the back touch screen by a couple millimeters up, when you compare by touching the front and back touch screen together with your fingers clamped to approx the same place, you’ll notice the back touch is offset by a few millimeters above the front touch screen. This means the backtouch is not exactly intuitive when used in reference to what you see in the front.

- Game: Wipeout: In Wipeout control mode, moving right finger at many times hits the right d-pad up, reversing the ship unexpectedly, This means the Right D-PAD to a little too close to the action buttons.

- OS: BUG: instability on OS screens, ie: settings, power down

- OS: BUG: Poor automatic WiFi Access Point selection. Vita will automatically erroneously pick the access point with worse signal

- Hardware: speaker placement, causes sound to go in and out every time the finger moves to hit different buttons, inadverdently covering the speaker, recommend bottom placement to avoid accidental covering

- OS: BUG: Bluetooth Stereo a2dp doesn’t reconnect upon device resume

----- poor game sound quality when Party voice is enabled

------have to manually reconnect to headphones

- OS: Interface: interface is very touch dependent, this was the same as Sony’s other newly converted touch devices, they tend to abandon all hardware button controls and force touch screen navigation as if the developers got too carried away by its discovery one day. There are many GUI instances where HW buttons still make more sense even in the presence of a touch screen. Like when there is only 1 button available to press (ie: ok) that should be equally accessible by our familiar X button, practically speaking it’s silly to completely abandon the HW interface. Lazy interface programming

- OS: Interface: Double tapping apps. In all apps/games, to access them, you first have to click on the icon on the app drawer, and then again click on the start button of the program to start the program.. I understand that some gaming information (ie: website, addons) is put in front but given the rarity of usage, couldn’t they be put into the main game screen? Other apps such as settings, friends, party, where there isn’t any other options on the front screen, what is the point in forcing the user to double tap?

- OS: Integration: Party, group apps, Friends, trophies, I’m still confused as to which app to launch for what purpose. These separate programs could have been integrated into one social app, where you can see your friends, select them to text or group chat or trophies.

This gated unintegrated experience forces a lot of guesswork and wasted load times between related apps that otherwise should have been an easy all-in-one integrated experience like other mobile social apps.

- OS: Interface: quick program switch, not allowing the top bar swipe gesture to pull down the list of open apps was a missed opportunity for quick app switch and WiFi on/off switching. The PSV seems to force the Playstation button on users to switch out of apps. Unfortunately, Sony is forcing the touch screen when it makes sense to allow HW button and forcing HW button, when it makes more sense to use the touch screen.

- OS: Interface: Cut and Paste: Again it seems pretty inconvenient whenever you want to move type something you’ve painstakingly typed on the touch pad to a different location, there is no way to do it. You are forced to retype what is already in front of you again. I would have accepted it even if the Copy clipboard was confined to pasting from the same program. For example, if you just see a non hyperlinked URL on the webpage that you’d want to go to in the browser, you’d literally have to manually type it in yourself. Or in the chat program if you want to refer to some text previously typed by copying the quote, again, you’d have to retype the whole passage manually. This might not be as big of an issue with an HW keyboard but when the device is dependent on a small touch screen keyboard, you’d want to make every effort to minimize any unnecessary typing.

By the year 2012, I would have expected Copy and Paste to be the most basic function across all text enabled devices.

- OS: Interface: Text cursor, not accessible by d-pad, forces touch access, but no text cursor handle like on Android and iPhone that allows easy cursor movement between characters. By the year 2012, I would have expected cursor control to have become a basic best practice across all touch enabled devices that have text cursors. (edit: cursor control is actually hidden, you have to press and hold the cursor for a second and the text field will magnify allowing you to drag and move the cursor back and forth. So this is good, but if only it wasn’t hidden to be found by accident.)

- Browser:

----------Double tap zoom is broken on many sites

----------No copy and paste

----------poor compatibility, even simple javascripts that are necessary to open certain webpages properly don’t work, for example I was unable to load the flyer from a simple futureshop webpage at all.

- OS: Interface: App Management:

There seems no way to organize the apps into folders, for example, Action games into one folder, puzzle games into other. On my android OS, I have 50 programs and games, none for which would be manageable if they were all just together in the app drawer, but thankfully with folders on the home screen, I was able to categorize them into their respective folders by functionality.

- OS: BUG:

Flight mode: with flight mode enabled, if you grant an app request for WiFi connection, the WiFi turns on, and the game proceeds. But BOTH the flight mode and WiFi icon remains active on the top bar even when the app has been closed. It appears the apps have no way of telling the OS what it’s done with the WiFi or that the OS should return the WiFi to its original state. In fact, after checking the Network settings, OS indicates flight mode is still enabled even though WiFi is also active. The redeeming factor is that upon closing the app, the WiFi icon does disappear (sometimes). But upon subsequent launch of the app, it no longer requests to enable the WiFi, it just does it automatically. The proper behavior should have been to ALWAYS ask for permission when Flight Mode is enabled, this could have serious implications for hospital settings where the WiFi gets inadvertently enabled without the user’s notice and permission. This is fairly poor hardware handling by the software

- OS: Functionality: Multitasking: The browser can not run without first closing the game. This means it's pretty hard to quickly reference for Walk-Throughs or cheat codes while you're playing a game without either first quitting or having a second device handy. It's completely understandable if games won't multi-task amongst other games, but when even the webbrowser doesn't work, essentially there is no multi-tasking, besides on built-in programs like Party, that needs it to be on for the Party Voice to work in game.

-Reviewer:

Last mobile console: NDS, last played 1 year ago, causal player of mobile games. Occasional PC gamer who enjoys some causal tablet gaming when bored.

Owned Sony devices:

Cameras: DSC-T9

Laptops: Vaio P

e-Readers: PRS-505, PRS-650, PRS-950

Gaming: PS2, PSV