Sony PSP History
Sony released the PSP, or PlayStation Portable, in 2004 in Japan. A few short months later, and the PSP came State side, ushering in a new era of handheld gaming. The PSP comes with advanced features, most notably it’s imposing widescreen display, built-in WIFI capabilities, and flash memory support. In September 2007, Sony released the PSP Slim, a thinner, lighter and more battery efficient version of its handheld console. The PSP Slim would go on to sell in high quantities, even posing a threateto Nintendo’s super successful DS handheld. Both models have many PSP hacks available for download.
PSP Hacks and Colors
The PSP comes in nine different colors, although not all colors are available in all regions around the world. These colors include lavender purple, mint green, icy silver, deep red, ceramic white, champagne gold, felicia blue, rose pink, and the original piano black. Most of these models, unfortunately, are only available in Asian countries. Most users running PSP hacks just have the regular black variety of PSP. In addition, many of these colors were only available as special edition bundles with games such as Daxer, Star Wars Battlefront, God of War, and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. Rare colors currently fetch for high prices on the used market.
PSP Slim
In the fall of 2007, Sony released the PSP Slim. The unit looks nearly identical to the original PSP, but it is 19% thinner and 33% lighter. These design modifications, while not particularly impressive on paper, do offer a noticeable portability advantage in real world use. In addition to these changes, the PSP Slim supports composite TV out, USB charging, more internal RAM (64 MB) and a superior screen. The UMD cache has also been improved, so that more information can be stored in memory, thus improving battery life by not having to spin the disc as much. It would of even been better, however, had Sony opted for leaving the UMD out of their new PSP.
PSP Hardware Specs
At the core of the PSP lies a 333 MHz MIPS R4000 CPU. The chip has 2 MB of VRAM running at 166 MHz. Due to battery life concerns, Sony originally stunted the PSP’s operating speed to 222Mhz. Any higher CPU speeds were only available with firmware hacks and homebrew applications. One such popular app is a PSP hacks applicationfor SNES emulation, which allows the PSP to run at its full speed to better play Super Nintendo ROMS.
