Reflections on the Sony NGP’s Hardware Capabilities

Now that you’ve had a look at the Sony’s NGP’s specs, let’s examine the overall hardware offering. For years I’ve been hearing gamers complain about…

Please be sure to click the YouTube video above before you start reading this article. It adds ambiance. Ready?!? Now that you’ve had a look at the Sony’s NGP’s specs, let’s examine the overall hardware offering. For years I’ve been hearing gamers complain about the PSP’s lack of a second analog stick; the NGP addresses this issue…but the hardware is so much more. Let’s break it down.

Five-Inch OLED Screen: While the size of the NGP’s screen trumps the 4.3-inch display on the PSP and 3.8-inch display on the PSPgo, the tech is probably the more interesting issue here. The PSP uses a TFT LCD display, while the NGP uses the considerably different OLED technology (similar to what’s used in the Samsung Fascinate). OLED offers better viewing angles, superior contrast, potentially improved battery life, and richer colors…but there are some caveats.

While OLED definitely has a brighter appearance than LCD, color snobs feel that the tech produces over-saturated and over-pronounced colors — particularly reds, blues, and purples. OLED and LCD screens consume roughly the same amount of power when displaying white and bright colors. When the screen displays black and dark colors, OLED has a power-saving advantage.

It would be wise for Sony to use dark colors for as many UI elements as possible and encourage its development partners to do the same. It’ll really help the battery life. While purists have issues with OLED’s color output, most consumers don’t have a problem with it and many of them prefer it over 100 percent accurate reproduction. It’s kind of similar to how many consumers prefer the overly warm pictures produced by Sony’s consumer digital cameras over the more accurate ones taken with Canon’s consumer-level goods.

(Random story: A friend and I were snapping pictures in London. My Canon accurately displayed the dreary weather. His Sony made it look like Jamaica.)

ARM Cortex A9 and SGX543MP4+: There’s some crazy, crazy power in the NGP. The ARM Cortex A9 used here is quad-core, as opposed to the dual-core variant being used in the Nvidia Tegra 250. Depending on the clock speed Sony chooses for this baby, it should trounce Tegra 250 products in terms of power and efficiency. Keep in mind that Tegra 250 products (Motorola Xoom, Motorola Atrix, Motorola Droid Bionic) are shipping within the next few months, while the NGP is a holiday 2011 release. Of course you’d expect a device released in the second half of the year to pack better tech than what’s released in the first half of the year.

As for the graphics chip, the PowerVR SGX543MP4+ is basically a multi-core version of the SGX found in the iPhone 4, iPad, Samsung Galaxy S phones, etc. Android enthusiasts will recall Samsung’s Hummingbird processor trouncing the competition in terms of graphics. The PowerVR chip was the reason why. Roughly a year later, gamers will reap the benefits of a multi-core version of that chip.

When you put it all together, do you get PlayStation 3-level graphics as rumored? Of course you don’t…but I expect the NGP to produce visuals that are close. Like I said earlier in the month, “I’m sure the PSP2 will serve up visuals that are comparable to what the PS3 offers. I’m also sure that the PSP2’s best graphics will be less impressive than the PS3’s best.”

Wrapping it Up: I hope this article gave you a better understanding of the Sony NGP’s power potential. While others are trying to dazzle you with sheer specs and telling you something is awesome simply because it’s quad-core (which is admittedly kind of awesome in a handheld console), I wanted to help you understand the relative value of an OLED screen, an ARM Cortex A9, and an SGX543MP+. If you have any questions, fire away in the comments section (please).