Sony's PS Vita Gets the Teardown Treatment
With the official PS Vita launch date nearly upon us, pre-orders are slowly starting to trickle in. Still, if you didn't have the foresight to pre-order a PS Vita, then you likely haven't gotten your hands on one yet. If you're still trying to make up your mind, there's a good chance you're waiting on the post-launch flurry of reviews and unboxings to help make that decision. After all, why would you spend hundreds of dollars on something before you know everything there is to know about it?
Today purveyor of tear-downs and repair guides iFixit has released a tear down of the device, which means you can acquaint yourself with every inch of this device before making a final decision with regard to purchasing one. Described as "an absolute gem to take apart" thanks to Sony's use of standard screws, the PS Vita scored a very respectable 8 out of 10 on iFixit's repairability scale. The console lost points for the presence of glue and the fact that the LCD was fused to plastic.
So, what did they find when they took their spudgers to the PS Vita? First and foremost, a very modular design which should aid in the swapping in and out of parts during repair. As we mentioned, this is made easier by Sony's use of common Phillips #00 screws. There's also nothing securing the battery in place and preventing you from replacing it yourself if the mood strikes you (hurray!). As far as hardware is concerned, the iFixit team identified the following parts:
* Sony CXD5315GG quad-core processor
* Samsung KLM4G1FE3A-F001 512 MB Mobile DDR2 SDRAM
* Fujitsu MB44C026A
* Marvell 88W878S-BKB2 Avastar WLAN/Bluetooth/FM Single-Chip SoC
* Wolfson Micro WM1803E audio codec
* STMicroelectronics 3GA51H gyroscope
* Kionix KXTC9 three-axis MEMS accelerometer
Head on over to iFixit for more photos and full details on how to take the Vita apart (spoiler: they had to bake it in the oven to separate the front plastic (and fused LCD) from the frame).
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this thing will be outdated in the next months by the new mobiles that will come out. only 512mn ram ... hhhmmm
As far as tear down and repair goes it looks to be a gem. I just have never been impressed with Sony's customer support. It will be interesting to see where it goes but I am not going to be an early adopter.
I thought it had an OLED, not LCD screen.
But will it sell?
this thing will be outdated in the next months by the new mobiles that will come out. only 512mn ram ... hhhmmm
The original had 32 MB RAM and ran all games decently. The 512 MB RAM here is more than enough as there is no OS running in the background and the background memory requirements are minimum. But would love to see this around the $150 mark. $250 is a bit too steep.
if only laptops were that easy to take apart. lol
this thing will be outdated in the next months by the new mobiles that will come out. only 512mn ram ... hhhmmm
It is more than enough, remember this is a handheld we are discussing here. I highly doubt we will see a single game on the Vita that will require that much to begin with. When it comes to non-gaming tasks it won't even come near to using that much.
But will it sell?
With the theory of multiverses there is every single possible scenario playing out which is infinite amount of combinations therefor there are infinite alternative universes. So Sony should be resting easy knowing that somewhere out there it is selling.
this thing will be outdated in the next months by the new mobiles that will come out. only 512mn ram ... hhhmmm
Like consoles, the OS it runs is probably significantly slimmer than smartphone OSs. Look at what devs could do with the PSP's 32MB, despite being much more powerful on paper smartphones have yet to rival those games. 512mb will be fine for this, even the PS3 only has 256MB of system RAM and 256 video, I think the Vita has dedicated video RAM as well.
this thing will be outdated in the next months by the new mobiles that will come out. only 512mn ram ... hhhmmm
A PS3 also has 512MB of RAM (256MB for the CPU and 256MB for the GPU) and yet can produce graphics way better than any smartphone on sale or in development. The gaming system run a OS that has much less overhead than those running on smartphones, so less memory is required.
Will it blend?????
What is the equivelent of the gpu in this as far as performance goes in say a radeon or geforce
It has Wolfson audio codec which is superior to Cirrus Logic which Apple uses in iDevices (I do have an iPod touch and iPad and I'm not too happy about their sound quality).
Very nice. Easy to replace parts that presumably will help the tech support department too.