This is my ongoing comparison of latest mobile phones/tablets to Vita. This is not a gaming will be better/worse thread.... just a continuation of my known opinion that Vita should have been a smartphone with real controls. Same power, features, etc, but a slightly different design as well as a smartphone.

Back in February when the new iPad was announced I created a thread comparing it against the Vita and stated that by end of summer there will be phones relatively equal to Vita and by year's end it will have been passed by mobile devices. I followed that up in May with the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3. Further illustrating my point that had Vita been a smartphone it could follow a yearly or every other year upgrade cycle allowing it to continuously remain competitive. Continuing to keep Playstation portable gaming at the forefront of the market. However as it stands now, I still see Vita as having a 3 to 5 year max life, losing marketshare over what the PSP gained, and not living up to the expectations of Sony.

This will be my last of these threads as it has now come full circle within the time frame I stated. May have to do one more....

So, with this... I was right and the Vita is now at least equaled, but more than likely surpassed by a $200 phone in terms of raw power. The A15s have been proven to be quite a bit more powerful than A9s... even when A15 is dual-core and A9 is quad. GPU is predominantly equal between the two, so no major differentiating factor there.

A15 vs A9 source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5571/ti-posts-omap-5-800-mhz-dual-core-a15-vs-quad-core-a9-13-ghz-video

Now if iPhone had the awesomeness to sync to PS3 controllers like Android can (honestly I bet it can, just don't own iPhone to verify), then you could have identical gaming experiences as well. I'm telling ya, phone and tablet gaming will be on par with current-gen by 2013 and by 2014 will probably have identical games as PS4/720/WiiU. The late 2013 GoogleTV devices will be serious contenders.

PS3 controller on Android: http://buy.thegameklip.com/

EDIT: Looks like early reports led me astray. iPhone5's A6 is not the A15 and therefore the CPU is still < Vita's. This means the Samsung Galaxy S3 is still the closest to the Vita and I still have a month to be wrong or not. :) C'mon Android OEMs!

However, reading this : http://www.anandtech.com/show/6292/iphone-5-a6-not-a15-custom-core : It is entirely possible their A6 is a lot closer to Vita or the S3's international quad-core option than you'd think at first glance.

This is a very nicely illustrated 'i told you so' thread. Good work.

But it's not a 200$ phone.

the Vita is not that powerful to begin with, at least games dont look surprisingly good
so isnt this craphone, no chances to see games on par with next gen
maybe the next one

Its not?

Who the hell buys a phone off contract?

On the plus side, doesn't this mean that Sony should be able to make a smaller Vita maybe a cell phone/slider design sometime soon?

Screen size would have to drop, but that level of processing can fit into a very small casing it seems.

Yes, it's not. A huge chunk of the contract is to pay off the phone. Calculations like this make people get into crazy high depts because they onls think about the initial cost and forget about the huge tail.

So one year after they reach PS360 they'll have a 8x leap and reach PS4/720? I'd take WiiU out of the picture because if anything you could lump it on your 2013 scenario, with current-gen games... hey, differences are that small already aren't they.

Did you even bother to estimate how fast a theoretical PS4/720-level GPU would drain an iPhone battery, even accounting for differences on screen size?

While I technically agree with you, its a cellphone. The reason no one cares about contracts is because we know we'll always have one, therefore the contract price is the real price.

not counting the contract cost is kinda silly.