Hands On with Sony’s New PlayStation Portable 3000

Sony’s new re-brushed and buffed-up PlayStation Portable3000 handheld video game system should finally be dangling from plastic retail hooks or resting in neat little rectangle stacks on shelves as you read this, but should existing PSP owners think about upgrading? The PSP 3000 is basically a point update to the PSP “Slim and Lite,” Sony’s lighter, faster, slimmer refresh that arrived in September 2007. Recall that the original PSP debuted in March 2005, so we certainly weren’t due for an update this soon, but an update we’re getting, and one that includes a brighter, faster LCD display, expanded video-out, and a built-in microphone.

Nearly 14 million US gamers already own Sony’s portable PlayStation, roughly half as many as own a Nintendo DS, which considering the PSP’s current baseline price — $170 to the DS’s easier to swallow $130 — is certainly a respectable feat. No one knows how many original PSP owners dropped $170 on the “Slim and Lite” last year, but if you (like me) were one of them, you’re probably wondering whether it’s worth another $170 simoleons or not.

Let’s start with the casing, which top to bottom and side to side looks virtually identical to the PSP 2000. Weighs and feels the same too. Have a closer look, however, and you’ll notice some subtle tweaks. For starters, the ‘Sony’ moniker has been moved from the right side of the screen to its left, where the PlayStation logo used to be. Where’d the logo go? Look down at what used to be the ‘Home’ button, which if you think about it kind of makes sense, bringing the PSP into alignment with the PlayStation 3, which has a similar “master control” button smack in the middle of its wireless gamepad.

The next thing you’ll notice is that the ‘PS’, ‘Select’ and ‘Start’ buttons along the bottom of the PSP 3000 are now fully oval-shaped and no longer oblong half-circles. Run your fingers along their tops and they also feel flush to the case molding, not slightly protruding, as they do on my PSP 2000.

Finally, just to the left of the letters ‘PSP’ sitting between the volume and brightness controls, there’s now a tiny hole: the new external microphone that’s supposed to make spontaneous wireless voice communications more robust, since you no longer need a special headset to rattle off taunts or make Skype calls.

Flip the PSP 3000 around and it looks identical to the 2000, save for the circular band of metal on the UMD tray, which looks to be about one-half to one-third the width of the one on the 2000. Aside from creating a sleeker overall look, I’m betting that it’s meant to reduce the amount of visible scratching, something my PSP 2000 shows traces of.

The overall ABS plastic of the casing feels and looks more metallic and less plasticky now, with a noticeably reduced amount of reflective “glitter” in the molding’s weave. The screen remains as prone to fingerprints as ever, but then, so do iPhones, iPods, regular mobile phones, digital camera LCDs, and when you think about it, pretty much any piece of backlit plastic you’re bound to end up touching at some point or another. (Hint: You know the special cleaning cloths you sometimes get with a new pair of glasses? I have a few of those, and they beat sweaters, sweatshirts, button-ups, dry cloths, damp cloths, etc. every time for getting any LCD safe and squeaky clean.)

Trip the “on” switch and you’re greeted by the same familiar logo and XMB interface, though you’ll notice it now looks quite a bit more colorful, with enhanced edge-distinctiveness in terms of darks and lights, no doubt an expression of the improved LCD which Sony said would offer a better color range and higher contrast ratio. There’s also supposed to be less glare, but to be honest, I never noticed the glare on my original PSP all the way back in 2005. I can’t see much difference one way or another with the 3000, which is to say, it looks just fine in any kind of ambient light and outside of direct sunlight.

Click over to ‘system’ settings and you’ll notice a new ‘color space’ option that lets you switch between ‘wide’ and ‘normal’ (don’t bother checking the PSP 1000/2000, — it’s not available). Think ‘vivid’ versus ‘standard’ on a TV and you’ve got the idea. ‘Wide’ is enabled by default, and makes everything look brighter and color-saturated. It tends to make the text in the operating system look a little too vivid at times, but load a game like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and the new colors simply pop, making it even easier to identify 3D in-game objects at a distance or in shadow, and the edges of menu bars and fonts in crowded interfaces look even cleaner and crisper. The picture looks quite a bit warmer, too, bringing the overall look nearer the sort of hard-to-duplicate hue richness you often enjoy with a really top notch high-definition tube television.

Samsung in 3rd position after Nokia, Sony Ericsson

Samsung mobile phones are becoming more popular with Indian users, as per a research. Lately, it has gone ahead of Motorola, placing it at the third position. It even aims to beat Sony Ericsson by launching wider ranges of cellphones..
MOBILE HANDSET market in India witnessed a new graphical shift among its major players. Samsung has pushed Motorola behind at third position as per figures from a market research firm.

According to the latest ORG statistical reports, Samsung’s market share increased from 5.7 per cent in January 2008, to seven per cent in March, this year. Eventually, surpassing Motorola’s shares that fell from 6.7 per cent to 5.9 per cent.

Nokia rules the top position. It continues to dominate the market with a whopping 59.5 per cent market share. Sony Ericsson stands at second position with a market share of 8.1 per cent. Nokia’s market share, however, has dropped over the last three months. As a result, it lost one or two percentage points.

Samsung informs that it plans to reach the second slot in a few months’ time, leaving Ericsson behind.

Head of Samsung Telecom, India, Sunil Dutt, is of the view, “We have achieved substantially. We hope to gain with our new range of models and become the second largest brand in the market by the end of 2008. We have a manufacturing capacity of seven million units, which can be enhanced further. We can also leverage the group’s existing facility in Chennai if needed.” The company is also preparing for launching a range of new handsets for Indian customers.

However, Motorola

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opines that it will re-look into its efforts on the Indian market, so the competition for the third slot can become more dynamic in the near future.

A year earlier, analysts from Merrill Lynch paid a visit to India and reported that Nokia managed to separate a massive 75-80 per cent of the market because it rapidly rolled out retail distribution deals. Of the estimated 79,000 retail outlets in India, selling cellphones, Nokia had a presence in 72,000 of them.

Ever since, almost every handset dealer has laboured to make their retail presence felt. More specifically, in the shrinking market, maximum share rests with Nokia.

Sony re-enters the glass tube business, with an innovative new speaker

Sony is a company well known for creating new and innovative products, and has done it again with a new transparent tube speaker that will be released in Japan for a hefty price tag.

During a press event at Sony headquarters in Tokyo, the company introduced an innovative speaker design that uses hard glass instead of paper and magnesium used in regular speaker designs.

The Sony Sountina NSA-PF1 – the words “sound” and “fountain” combined – stands almost six feet high, has the width of a baseball bat, and can help music listeners cover 360 degrees of a room without stereophonics. It’s said to have an audible range of between 50 and 20,000 Hz.

Traditional speakers produce sound in one direction by pushing sound waves over a diaphragm, but the Sony speakers vibrates a glass tube that is able to send sound waves 360 degrees.

Aside from the home music market, Sony plans to market the pricey speakers ($10,000, or over a million yen) to department stores, hotels and other public places where one speaker may be ideal.

To add a certain ambiance, Sony also included three different LEDs for owners to use: blue, amber, pink, or purple. The LED is located at the bottom of the speaker, and reflects off of a stainless steel casing at the top of the tube. If used in a room dark enough, the glow can be seen off a steel string located inside the top of the tube. The colors must be changed via remote control and cannot change automatically.

Scheduled to launch on June 20, Sony hopes to sell several hundred speakers per year. The company plans to market the speaker in the United States, Brazil, Russia and Middle East starting in the fall, with additional locations to be added if demand is high enough.