By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
twesterm on 20 July 2007
Edit Thread
davygee said:

I think there is a bit of a mixup here.

Right, the original battery in the original PSP gives gamers on average 5 hours play. The new PSP has a smaller battery, but due to lower power consumption in the new model. The smaller battery performs exactly the same as the existing PSP battery.

But one thing that will give room for improvement in the new PSP, is the extra 32Mb of Flash RAM. Once developers get used to the new memory, then theoretically, the games will load faster and the UMD drive will be used less over the course of the game thus reducing the drain on the battery.

Anyway, I easily get 6+ hours playing games on my PSP at the moment using the original battery. One thing that should be noted though, is by placing the system on standby uses a reasonable amount of energy to maintain. I.e. your battery could be full, you play 1 hour worth of gaming and put it on standby and don't play the game for 2 weeks...when you go back, the battery will have been drained.

I travel 45 minutes to and from work each day and I can easily play my PSP 3 times daily for 3 days with an extra 30-40 minutes during my lunch hour without the need for a recharge. So in practice, I can get easily get between 4.5 and 6 hours with the PSP on standby between playing times.


 There's never been a question that the PSP Slim uses less power, that's not the problem, the problem is that it ships with a battery that gives youthe same embarrassing battery life as before.  If you do want a longer battery life, you have to get one of the old PSP batteries.  

There are two things wrong with that:

  1. The larger battery sticks out of the PSP light.  If that wasn't bad enough, you also have to order a new battery cover to keep it from being exposed.
  2. If you're buying a PSP slim without previously having a PS, you're obviously going to have to buy a battery.  If you're buying the slim and previously owned a PSP, you're more than likely still going to have to buy the old battery.  I'm assuming you'll sell your old one (as most people would) and if you do sell the old one, you're going to have to sell the original battery with it.  Either way, you're going to be buying the new battery.
This really is just a slap in the face to anyone that was considering buying the PSP slim and this fact alone has driven many people away from buying.  One of the biggest problems with the PSP was the battery life and by Sony not really addressing this, it just screams "we don't care what you think, you'll buy it based on the name and the fact it's new.  You did it with the DS right?"  Of course every redesign in the DS people loved and had to do with customer complaints.