Sony has finally gotten around to upgrading the PSP. Those of you hoping for the much anticipated long rumored but so far vaporware PSP 2.0 will be disappointed. With the release of PSP Firmware 3.50, the PSP got an upgrade under the hood.

Before the upgrade, the PSP’s processor was “only” able to operate at 266MHz but the new firmware fixes this problem but adds another. After the upgrade, you will notice slightly less battery life because the processor is now operating at full speed, all the time.

That may be the very reason the processor was underclocked in the first place, to conserve battery life. Also, existing games won’t run any faster; this change will however enable games in development to run faster with smoother frame rates. Well, great.

Not only will my PSP have shorter battery life but it won’t even make my existing library run smoother and some titles could use that boost in processor power. How about some firmware that scales the processor as necessary? But, even with a utility like that running, the simple fact of optimizing the processor uses battery power.

According to PSP Fanboy, you won’t be able to play the newer titles which will require the full 333MHz speed so acquire the latest PSP firmware now.

I can see it now, on the back of PSP games, “requires firmware version 3.5.x or higher.”  Or, just wait for Sony to get around to releasing the PSP 2.0 which I’m sure will happen between now and the year 2020.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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