The Nintendo DS is a huge hit, the PSP isn’t doing too bad either and there are persistent rumors that Microsoft’s working on their own handheld. The next generation of handhelds could be very interesting indeed. What kind of characteristics can we expect in a system coming out, say, 2 years from now?
Here’s my wish list:
- Two screens, DS-style, in a clamshell design.
- The bottom and main screen is a 6 inch LED-backlit widescreen supporting multi-touch. It has a resolution of 720×480 (full DVD resolution) or better.
- The top screen is an e-ink screen that swivels like a tablet PC screen, so you can keep it visible while playing and while the system is closed. E-ink screens don’t update quickly, but they can keep showing the same information indefinitely without using any battery power. While playing, this screen would show information that doesn’t update very often – maps and such. The cool thing is when the system is sleeping: you could have this screen show you information throughout the day. The system could wake up every minute to update the screen with your RSS feeds, the status of your realm in a MMO, the weather, whatever.
- The 4 face buttons (usual X, Y, A, B buttons) have small (16×16) OLED screens in them, so they can show icons of the effect of the button. Instead of pressing the X button to shoot, you press the button with a gun icon – much easier.
- Wifi with connectivity options similar to Xbox Live. You can go buy and download games directly from the system.
- VOIP
- Bluetooth support for peripherals, like a headset for VOIP for example.
- TV output so you can play on a large screen when you’re not on the go.
- 3rd party applications are supported in a sandbox to avoid problems with viruses
- 800 MHz CPU
- GPU
- 512MB RAM
- 16GB SSD
- Slot for other flash cards for additional space
- 6 hours battery life
June 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
now heres my psp next gen idea!!
two analogs, instead of one for a more “home console like” experience.
screen is fine, but sony should throw around ideas of UMD styled Blu-Rays…
spring loaded triggers, like the 360’s.
thats about it, not much of a change….a shun note to the present psp maybe……..
SPiTFiR3
July 8th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I love the icons on the face buttons. Only problem is they’d probably get smudged from people’s sweaty hands XD
What I don’t like is your swiveling E-ink screen. By the way, it WILL still use battery due to the backlight (you can’t see most screens without the light on, so no avoiding that one). The point of having a second screen isn’t for just maps or status reports, in my opinion; limiting it wouldn’t be a very good idea. I can’t comprehend in my mind how you could get it to swivel very well… 0_0
Not to be totally critical, but it seems to me that if this is just a wishlist type deal you might as well say “2 Ghz processor” and “16 hours battery life.” Whether its likely or not, bigger numbers are better
July 8th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
The nice thing with e-ink is that a backlight is a lot less necessary — it’s like ink on paper, really. But that second screen is probably the most far-fetched idea in the whole thing. I like clam shell designs — they protect the screen while folded — and I tried to come up with something cool to do with the top part. I feel the DS’ second is kinda pointless, but a handheld with a e-ink screen would be pretty neat, I think. As for the swiveling thing, it’d work like any tablet PC, nothing exceptional.
And I actually believe you could have all of those features in a 350$ handheld in a couple of years (except maybe the e-ink display, depends on how fast the price drops). A 1000$ UMPC today has most of those features already, all we need is for price to get lower. That’s why I didn’t go too wild with it. I was trying to figure out what could potentially be done, not just what I wish could be done.
July 14th, 2008 at 4:05 am
its a good plan, but any company will go completely broke if they had actual oleds on each button or a miniture blue ray player, unless they actually somehow sell it for like a thousand without the demand dropping at all.