PSP Battery Life Discussion Thread

[PseudoChron]

One of the main concerns about the PSP is what the battery life will be. The PSP is the first gaming handheld to use optical discs, which use up battery power when they spin. The October issue of Popular Science had an article on batteries, and as a sidebar they mentioned the PSP. This is what they said:
How long will the battery in Sony's upcoming
Playstation Portable last? That depends.

MUSIC = 10 hours
Listening to music doesn't tax the 33MHz
processor and allows the 16.77-million-color
TFT LCD screen to dim, saving energy.

GAMING = 8 hours
Powering extra processor cycles and full-motion
video on the 480x272-pixel LCD screen reduces
the battery life by a couple hours.

MOVIES = 2.5 hours
Movies require the PSP to continuously run a
motor and laser to spin and read the 1.8GB
Universal Media Disc, an optical disk drive.
I don't know if Popular Science knows these figures for a fact or if they are just speculating, it did not say.

For music , I assume that they mean UMD music discs, not music saved on a memory stick, or else they would have mentioned that there would be battery life saved by not spining the drive. I hope that, when listening to music, we will have the option to turn off the screen completely.

I don't understand why there would be such a big difference between movies and games. Sony created the UMD specifically for the PSP, I'm sure they could make it copy some of the disc to RAM when playing a movie, so it wouldn't spin much more than a game disc would.

[RC Cola]

I would assume that it is a lot harder to do that with movies. I know that games depend on how much the developers put in the need to read the disc, so that if they cut down that to a minimum, battery life should be nice. I think this is why it is speculative on the battery life since no games are really complete, or complete enough, to test the battery. I don't really know how this works though, so I'm just assuming that movies can't quite do what games do by cutting down on times that are needed to access the disc.

[Death, Jr.]

but that doesn't mean that sony cant revamp their movie playing software to do that for them like the developers do with games

[Gegenki]

huh?
People that have Sony minidic players may notice that somtimes when chaning track it takes a few seconds longer than normal. You may also notice that sometimes it vibrates and makes noise and sometimes it doesn't. At the start of a track for about 10 seconds the minidisc reads the data. Then the disk stops spinning for a while, until it has to load the next part. One would imagin that a PSP will have much more memory than a minidisk player; leading to less power used.
Games vs. movies are a bit of a mysty area. But my hypothesis is that the PSP will be able to load game data for the level and then switch of the drive, alot like the PS2 does. Try it. One or Two games won't work but on most games you can keep playing once you have taken the CD out.
Movies are more high maintenance. They require a constant stream while decoding the video & audio data. A DVD runs at 2mb/s. PSP could take the data from the disk and load it to the memory but it would still have to decode it so it would make no difference. In fact, if you started using the Ram it would use even more battery

(sorry I always use these long posts)

[gamingmonkey2004]

how dare you make a long post! lol jk
yea i like what you said. battery life really isnt much of an issue for me.8 hours or w/e for games is plenty...i dont think ill ever do over 8 hours of playing without taking a break of some kind or charging it or w/e

[Private Tucker]

Thats really good timing for movies,although i would be more focused on playing games. 8)

[Texhnolith]

I got some inside info using my EA contacts who have contact with game developments studios who use the PSPs.

He said:
Battery Life:
- 15 hour music
- 2,5 hour movie playback (unless played from memorystick)
- 2,5 - 10 hour gaming

Battlife when gaming depends indeed on the way the game is developed.
The more the disc has to spin the faster the battery goes dead.
Before games are released the game have to be aproved by Sonys CQC (Consumer Quality Control) of SCEE (European). One of the requirements the games have to meet is minimum play time of 5 hours.

But according to my contact he said the games he knew one lasted about 6 hours and 3 others around 8.

And he said the PSP would be included with the headphones with build in remote and a 32mb memorystick wich would hold Savegames, short movies and a couple of MP3s.

I know it may not sound reliable comming from me saying i have some contacts.
As far as i know this guy is rather reliable. Met him a couple times and got invited to game events because of him.
Im just sharing what he told me.

[speedis]

I got some inside info using my EA contacts who have contact with game developments studios who use the PSPs.

He said:
Battery Life:
- 15 hour music
- 2,5 hour movie playback (unless played from memorystick)
- 2,5 - 10 hour gaming

Battlife when gaming depends indeed on the way the game is developed.
The more the disc has to spin the faster the battery goes dead.
Before games are released the game have to be aproved by Sonys CQC (Consumer Quality Control) of SCEE (European). One of the requirements the games have to meet is minimum play time of 5 hours.

But according to my contact he said the games he knew one lasted about 6 hours and 3 others around 8.

And he said the PSP would be included with the headphones with build in remote and a 32mb memorystick wich would hold Savegames, short movies and a couple of MP3s.

I know it may not sound reliable comming from me saying i have some contacts.
As far as i know this guy is rather reliable. Met him a couple times and got invited to game events because of him.
Im just sharing what he told me.

I belive this is bullshit, because you know why..? If it was true and you just posted this, then that guy from EA would know you had told people about it, and he probably wouldnt tell you anything else in the future. Plus, what would some guy from EA know about the PSP packages... But if it's true then it's all good.

[Texhnolith]

If he didn't want me to spread it around he would have told me.
He told me many thing about the NFS series and all turned out to be true.
I knew about Underground 2 a month or 2 before it was announced.
Worknig title was "Deep Underground" back then.

I hope its true too. Ofcourse we cant be sure till sony officialy announces this. But to me this source has always been reliable. I have no reason to not believe him. I know he has a lot of contacts in the gaming world.

But well have to wait and see. IMO the battery life thing sounds quite accurate..

[Grandia]

If he didn't want me to spread it around he would have told me.
He told me many thing about the NFS series and all turned out to be true.
I knew about Underground 2 a month or 2 before it was announced.
Worknig title was "Deep Underground" back then.

I hope its true too. Ofcourse we cant be sure till sony officialy announces this. But to me this source has always been reliable. I have no reason to not believe him. I know he has a lot of contacts in the gaming world.

But well have to wait and see. IMO the battery life thing sounds quite accurate..
I pray that this is correct. Did he mention anything about a lack of launch titles, or thermal problems in the PSP? I'm hoping that it will be released on schedule.

[Abstract Emotion]

When Sony said battery life was up to developers, it wasnt just them cleaning their hands of the issue. Regardless of how many batteries they pumed into the system, some games STILL suck up more. The optical drive is the major factor there. However, im nto worried. The most time ill be playing PSP without an outlet nearby is 4 hours.

On another note, regarding psp battery,
Hmm. Alright. I think its safe to say neither system can properly port all games. You cannot compact 1.8gigas to 128 megs (and if you nintendo fanboys know a way, please tell me, it'd be useful for my laptop). And the psp has no touch screen, although it could dsimulate two screens by turning the unit 90 degress clockwise.

About PSP battery life, IGN was playing the system off UMD for 1.5 hours, and the system never lost one of its three battery bars. This either means the system will have 4.5 hours battery life minimum, or sony disabled the battery display at this showing, in order to decieve the public. However, I doubt they would decieve the public, because the truth will be coming anyways, and then they would lose support. Another point to make though is the psp battery life can be anything from 2-10 hours! A game like GTA or Morrowind would constantly stream datta from the UMD, and rely heavily on the proccesors. Whereas Bust A Move! will obiviously have next to know UMD use or proccesor tax. The battery life is truly in the developers hands.

Reagrding Sony's batteyr limits, I say they let developers do what they want and then slap another thing on the back of the psp case (ya know like beside those boxes with space required, number of playes etc) entitled "Battery Life