Looks like Alice was doing the same thing as me last night: check how her site rendered on the PSP’s new web browser.
I took a few grabs of the PSP in action with the BBC News website, including the “High PDA” site I built for this specific use a few years back.
The web functionality has arrived as part of the PSP’s V2.0 firmware. The new firmware is Sony’s attempt to further prevent so-called “home brew” (unofficial, unlicensed) applications being run on the unit. Whilst I’m actually very much in favour of such hacking, ultimately I will actually find a browser in my PSP very useful having recently stopped using my mobile’s GPRS functionality.
The browser itself is a version of Access NetFront. The Japanese company first made a name for itself with an excellent rival browser to Pocket Internet Explorer on Windows Pocket PC 2000. Back then PIE couldn’t handle CSS, and was essentially IE3. Access NetFront was the only near-IE5 browser available for a Pocket PC at the time.
Unfortunately the PSP browser was a slight disappointment. Despite it being having a “tabbed browsing” approach, flicking between tabs seemed to require the unit to re-render the page – unfortunate seeing as a lot user behaviour around tabs is being able to quickly check content on different pages.
The other annoyance is that authentication username and password details are not cached or stored, which is particularly frustrating if you have to type a 15 digital alpha-numeric code on the push-button entry mechanism every time you want to view your email!
[Check out more photos of the PSP browser in action lot on Flickr]