Sony’s Answer to the iPhone?

It was announced a couple of days ago that BT and Sony will be partnering up to allow the PSP (PlayStation Portable) to make voice and video calls, but only over the internet in VoIP form.

BT Chief, Steve Andrews, described the combination of “SCEE and BT working together a natural fit. Sony is a world-class company producing some of the world’s most innovative electronic devices and BT is at the forefront of communications with the 21CN global platform. The PSP is an excellent device for both gaming and communications, because of its high quality screen and audio capabilities. With over 8 million PSPs shipped across Europe, we are very excited by the opportunity to give customers a whole new communications experience, connecting and seeing friends across the world through BT’s technology.”

I’m a little skeptical about this idea though. Have you seen the PSP at all? It’s not exactly the smallest of devices and one would look like a bit of a tech-headed clown when holding it up to their ear to make a phone call. There will no doubt be headphones, I know, but whipping them out, plugging them in, and sticking them in your ear every time the device rings will be a bit of a hassle and the fad will surely die out quicker than you can say “iPhone arriving on time!”

I now find myself questioning what Sony wants the PSP to actually be. Is it a portable games console with poor battery life, an oversized MP3 player, a rather poor video player, or a mobile phone? Or is it a case of being an all-in-one that’s doing a half-assed job of the Nintendo DS, iPod, and Nokia N90?

Next there will be 10-year-olds walking down the street with friends making phone calls on the most obvious of technology-kits available while crackheads, looking for the next item to steal in order to satisfy their junkie needs, make a dive for them and steal the pride and joy that their parents probably had to work incredibly hard for. And please don’t tell me a grown adult will be making calls on this down the street, please!

It seems to me that Sony is second place to Nintendo and its DS in the portable games console market at this moment in time and clearly needs a new way to revamp its “boom box of the 1980s” handheld device.

Competing with the iPhone? Not likely. The iPhone was designed first and foremost as a mobile phone (not a Smartfone, people!) and has gotten all the features right, as far as we know, when it comes to making and receiving telephone calls. Secondly, its music player is actually the iPod technology built right in, a tried and tested piece of technology that has sold so much over the past 5 years that it’s now the standard in portable music. Then there’s the video on the iPhone that promises better quality video than the PSP, with H.264 encoding on a 640 x 480 resolution screen; compared to PSP’s MP4 480 x 272 screen, the iPhone wins hands down. The only thing Sony beats the iPhone on here is gaming, which is what the PSP was originally designed to offer and something the iPhone was not. Of course, you could throw in the replaceable battery (which is still poor) and expandable memory to beat the iPhone, but that’s drifting a little off the point somewhat.

Ladies and gentlemen, my rant is over and it’s now your turn to leave your thoughts on Sony and BT’s plans below.