PlayStation Vita social apps, tech specs announced

Facebook, Twitter, and more for Vita

8.16.11 / 15:38 / Sal Romano

PlayStation Vita will boast its own share of social applications come release. In addition to PlayStation Network-based applications like Near and Party, third-party applications such as Facebook and Twitter will be available from day one as free downloads for the handheld.

The applications include:

• Facebook: Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Over 750 million active users visit Facebook each month.
• Foursquare: foursquare is a location-based service that helps users explore the world around them. Using PS Vita, users can “check in” at the locations they visit to meet up with friends, and share information about places. Users can also collect virtual badges for exploring new places, and can earn points to compete against friends.
• Skype: Skype is software which enables people to communicate with others around the world using Internet-connected devices. Skype has more than 170 million average monthly connected users (for the three months ended June 30, 2011). Users of PS Vita will be able to use Skype to make free calls to others on Skype, as well as low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles virtually anywhere in the world.
• Twitter: Twitter instantly connects people everywhere to what’s most meaningful to them. At the heart of Twitter are short messages called Tweets, which are 140 characters or less in length. Users can follow celebrities, friends or other people they find interesting to discover what’s happening around the world.

Each application can be downloaded off the PlayStation Store.

Sony also took the opportunity to reveal Vita’s final tech specs:

PlayStation Vita launches this year in Japan. An early 2012 release will follow in North America and Europe.

lol looks like those internet rumours were bs...

main memory - 512...

512 RAM and 128 VRAM... for a portable device with an optimised os those are beast specs

ummm source link? actual specs?

I watched the conference and don't recall any tech specs being released.

all is great!

I was hoping they revelead battery capacity.

the psp had way less RAM ( maybe 64 ) so already thats a major difference and in terms of the ps3 the ps3 has a total of 512 RAM divided into 2 so 256 + 256... so already you can see the vita outclasses the ps3 in terms of RAM and what makes that even more significant is that its a handheld and therefore will use less resources than a full blown console because of things being scaled down for its size

Specs will be beat by smartphones by 2013.

Guess the mobile phone market to portables will be identical to PCs to consoles.

One will always have better hardware while other has better controls. However, on phones, you'll also get far cheaper game costs.