Sometimes I ask myself why Sony hasn't launched an Android Smartphone with PS Vita power, great controls and that it could actually play PS Vita games, I think they haven't for two main reasons:

1.- Battery life.

If Sony made the PS Vita Phone it would be a slider like the PSP Go or Xperia Play (probably with two analog nubs instead of sticks or touchpad analogs), but that would mean that even at 5 inches screen there will not be a battery powerful enough to play Vita games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and still function as a Smartphone.

The Vita battery taps outs at around 4 hours with graphic intensive games and thats ok but if that same device were your smartphone it should also work for another 4 hours.

2.- Android OS.

Even if users wouldn't mind a sacrifice in battery power there's still the big problem with the phone OS, Sony can't use Android because that would leave them very vulnerable to piracy and they won't create one because no user would want to give up Android's huge apps library.

Things are between a rock and a hard place for a Vita Phone unless Sony acepts that is going to be pirated anyway put Android in it and makes most of his money back from the hardware and not from the software (its not weird to see a smartphone for 600$ and it could be bought with a contract) but then because of piracy third parties may not want to support it like it happened with PSP but they are not supporting it that much now anyway.

Portable consoles or PSVITA will fall when they release this one dangerous.

No thank you

I personally only like using my phone for texting & calling thats why i've never cared to upgrading from my crappy 5 year old phone gaming on my gfs galaxy is dull.

leave to portable gaming devices as they are I say.

maybe its that model, but it doesn't look comfortable to hold in my opinion.

skype app is already on the ps vita. so its already technically a phone.

Phone support can already be implemented into current existing vita models..Well, at lest the 3G ones. The hardware already exists. However... I'd rather keep my phone separate, and not have my battery drained.. That, and when i don't want to play vita (which is common), i can bring small my dumb cell phone, and not worry about it dying in 15 minutes.

And to anyone who can't see I'm joking, re-freaggin-lax.

If there was a vita model that moved the headphone jack to the side of the console, and somehow made it thinner, even by a spec, with 24 hours of battery life, I'd get that model. Currently, the Vita just can't last long enough to be useable as a phone.

So, I'll keep my actual cell.

It would be a bit odd to use my 3G PSV as a phone. The use of a wired headset or even a Bluetooth ear piece would make it a lot less so.

That said, depending on what the service carrier charged for cellular service, I wouldn't mind using it as a secondary phone, not that I currently carry my PSV anywhere I go.

I think the PSV compatible phone would/should only be an option if the PSV platform for games is on the brink of being discontinued due to continued poor hardware sales. Transferring the ability to play PSV games on a smartphone would save it as a development platform, but I'm really not sure how well $30-40 game chips and downloads through a digital store would float on anything other than a dedicated handheld gaming system.

While it would be nice to keep the non-phone, non subscription plan tied PSV around as an option, if it's losing money, sales and development support as a result, at that point the only major supporter of the platform would be Sony, and I really don't see how anyone could justify its continued existence other than as a service to those who already bought into the platform. While that would be nice to loyal customers, it would not be reason enough to keep it on life support.

You know the real problem here when talking about making it a phone?

that's disgusting..

1. Probably it will become more feasible if PSV components get a die shrink and battery tech further evolves. Some brilliant new idea in the slider design itself could help a lot too.

2. PSV should run natively and Android in a Virtual Machine that they should have developed not in-house, but by true 3rd party experts in the field, to avoid what happened with Linux on PS3.