Sony’s New Handheld Revealed

Sony has just announced its new handheld today in Tokyo at the PlayStation Meeting 2011 under the codename NGP.

The NGP has an ARM Coretex A9 Core with 4 cores. The physical dimensions for the NGP is 182 x 83.5 x 18.6mm. It comes with an 5″ OLED touch sensitive screen that is 960 x 544 and also a touch sensitive rear pads. Sony decided to add both front and rear facing cameras to this device so I hope that it will support skype with video chat of some sort. It is also equipped with gyroscopes and accelerometers that can be used for games and apps. The addition of built-in GPS is something new for a gaming handheld, although I’m not sure how they will use it for gaming unless there will be a GPS app that will come out for it. The biggest change with the button layout is the addition of a second analog stick with the device, which is a huge improvement for those who play FPS. Connections-wise it supports 805.11b/g/n wireless and also Bluetooth connection.

Sony has ditched the UMD format and is going with digital distribution and flash-based cards. The unit is sealed shut like an iPhone, so that the battery cannot be serviced by the user and Sony says that it is due to the rear touchpads, although I suspect its so that hackers may have a little bit of a harder time to get into the system to hack it. The device looks sleek and nice. Some info that hasn’t been announced is the final format of the physical cards and also the memory that will be included with the device.

(via Kotaku, specs via Game Informer)