iPhone vs PSP: which has the better specs?

John Brownlee

#1 – 10:13 AM May 14, 2008

Lack of traditional controls really hurt the iPhone as a real contender, I don't care what the Apple fans say. They point to the Wii as a device that transcends traditional controls, but it's not like Nintendo eschewed putting buttons and directional pads on the Wii. You are very limited to what you can do on an iPhone: it's a fantastic device, but accelerometers and screen pinching will only get you so far.

stratosfyr

#2 – 10:39 AM May 14, 2008

You could easily add some sort of cradle/case to an iPhone with gaming buttons on it -- like the handle pads that are available for the PSP.

David Carroll

#3 – 10:45 AM May 14, 2008

Don't both the iPhone and Wii controller use bluetooth? Now I know that current iPhone OS bluetooth support is a little shy of comprehensive, and Apple would prefer you buy only their new silver/black/crystal $$$.99 controller. Note to Apple legal: This is utter speculation please don't subpoena me.

Sure you need real buttons for a lot of game genres but I have played some potentially addictive game demos on my iTouch that use the touch screen and accelerometer to great effect. Most of these are not action games.

"To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail..."

cromulent1

#4 – 10:47 AM May 14, 2008

The PSP has two 333MHz cores, both "MIPS R4000" 32-bit processors, it seems. One for CPU, and one called the Media Engine, which seems to be split between graphical and sound processing.

Regardless, the iPhone hardware is 2.5 years newer than the PSP, so yeah, it should be plenty powerful for gaming. Control methods are definitely the primary hurdle. The DS has shown that there's a decent amount that can be done with a touch screen, but some game types just don't lend themselves to that.

Doomstalk

#5 – 10:54 AM May 14, 2008

#1. Agreed. Most of the games I've played on the iPhone have been more tech demos than anything I'd want to play for more than 5 minutes. You go "Oooh neat, tilt control!" and then reach for your Nintendo DS.

bardfinn

#6 – 11:11 AM May 14, 2008

I have and use an iPod touch.

It has an intermittent issue with deciding it no longer wishes to respond to screen touches for about five seconds, if the wireless connection isn't to its' liking. At the least, that seems to be the common denominator in the issue.

Anything that I have to turn off the wireless connection of, to get reliable and smooth input interaction ... not high on the gaming platform list.

Inverse Square

#7 – 11:29 AM May 14, 2008

Presumably you could make buttons just a part of the interface on the screen. Yeah, the gaming part would be smaller but still larger than, say, the gameboy advances'.

The psp slim has 64MB RAM. Still not as good but fair's fair. Also considerable is that the memory sticks go up to 16GB.

John Brownlee

#8 – 11:54 AM May 14, 2008

@7 -- Pocket PCs have tried the "emulated screen buttons" approach for years. It just doesn't work precisely or reliably.

I think we'll see some wonderful games on the iPhone, but will it take on the DS or PSP for the portable gaming crown? I don't think so.

Hunty

#9 – 12:05 PM May 14, 2008

I think this is mostly an academic debate, since there aren't actually any games for either system. :)

Inverse Square

#10 – 4:42 PM May 14, 2008

That's where you're wrong, 9. The PSP and DS have significant homebrew groups, which I've always thought boingboing have reported an annoyingly small amount on. Should all these homebrewers emigrate to the iPhone?

The most significant things from both of the homebrew factions though are on the PSP: a full speed PSX emulator and a N64 emulator that is, say 0.7 speed on average. The latter has taken two and a half years to get to this point, and the former was developed by sony, so it's a big and popular investment.

PrettyBoyTim

#11 – 1:46 AM May 15, 2008

'None specified' for the PSP GPU? The PSP has a proprietary GPU whose specs aren't that far off the one in the PS2.

Anonymous Anonymous

#12 – 9:43 PM May 15, 2008

So all apple has to do is add a removable media slot and like 6 buttons and they've got a perfect gaming device.

Sounds like the G2 iPhone/iTouch to me.

--JJ

Anonymous Anonymous

#13 – 8:09 PM August 26, 2008

psp is better u can even download a file to hav a iphone menu on it

Anonymous Anonymous

#14 – 11:58 PM September 17, 2008

Hey, you should check out this. http://www.icontrolpad.com/
This changes things.

Anonymous Anonymous

#15 – 11:26 PM February 23, 2009

PSP actually has 2, 333 mhz processors. Not one.

Anonymous Anonymous

#16 – 12:11 PM April 7, 2009

some corrections:
1. the PSP has three (3) CPUs, not including the sound and the (two) graphic engines: 2 MIPS R4000 running at 333MHz and one ARM7 running at unknown (lower) speed. One of the MIPS CPUs supports SIMD.

(btw, what do you mean by "proprietary"??)

2. the storage is not 4MB. This is a special type of memory. On the other hand the storage space is "unlimited" since Sony, unlike Apple, allows use of memory cards which are usually 4,8,16 or 32GB. So call it onboard or not, PSP has more storage space.

3. The IrDA interface has been removed in newer versions of PSP

4. Main memory is 64MB as far as I know.

5. The PSP has far better support for OpenGL (ES) than iPhone. In addition, the graphic chip in iPhone 3G is extremly buggy and slow.

Having said that, I think the whole discussion is stupid. The iPhone does not have the right controls, not the right graphic hardware, not a the required battery time, and most important, it is 4-5 times more expensive and does not have not the developer base and game catalog.

Anonymous Anonymous

#17 – 1:51 PM April 20, 2009

it's just stupid to discuss about this because you can look to the hardware specs(psp wins) and the most important the psp has far more better games and controls and if you compare the price of an psp witch an ipod??????
just get yourself a psp.

Anonymous Anonymous

#18 – 9:25 AM May 18, 2009

If im honest the only device worth using out of the two hand-hend market devices is the DS. It's got such a wide range of games its not even worth looking at anything else. The PSP has never been wonderful and im shocked to see Sony still pushing it in 2009.

But what does this mean for the Iphone / touch? good things as like PC's they have an awful lot more going for them than just power. The Iphone is the PC of the hand held market, it's not reall intended to be a gaming device but it'll be one. Hell EA's NFS looks damn good and thats out now.

sdfdsf

#19 – 12:21 PM June 7, 2009

nice joke post you put up here I own a hacked psp 3000 and I play that way more than my iphone, i use my iphone as an ipod and phone not as a gaming device because the controls suck