charlequin said:
Pretty much every rumor we've received about PSP2 development hardware in the wild talks about non-final development-kit hardware (not semi-finished working prototype of consumer hardware)
I see two devices in leaked shots, both of which look like prototypes probably for testing and development purposes. If the two were sharing the same platform, I think some PSP2 devs would have access to both pieces of hardware for testing from a reasonably early stage. Afterall, there'd be issues presumably specific to the phone about its operating environment that the parties involved would probably want to thoroughly test with the help of a couple of developers.
charlequin said:
and comes along with stories of hardware that is running too hot to actually work in a PSP Go/slide-phone form factor.
There was one such story, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't ultimately intend to have or support slider designs when final/cooler hardware is available. Afterall, switching to a different design for dev test units because such units weren't holding up reliably due to heat issues wouldn't necessarily inform us about their intentions for final designs (or what final designs could be supported).
charlequin said:
Similarly, I made the point about announcement timeframes way back when this thread was starting out: smartphone models get announced a month or two in advance at most, after hardware is already 100% locked down; gaming hardware platforms get announced at least eight months in advance, at a point where final hardware design is still in flux. If we were talking about a "PSP2 platform," SE wouldn't be sending out handsets to people yet; they'd be in relatively early R&D to put together handsets that'd be finalized eight months from now when the system was nearing its actual release.
This is a better point, and I can see the validity of it in the context of ordinary smartphones. However, as an alternative suggestion, I think if this was a PSP2 device, it wouldn't be a regular smartphone from a development point of view, it would have an unconventional mix of operating systems and software. It would require a certain amount of development and testing and, I think, the involvement of at least some subset of probably first party developers to help iron out runtime issues and the like. I certainly don't think it would be something they'd start testing with prototypes a couple of months before release as with an ordinary phone.
charlequin said:
On the other hand, if this were just a single specific phone unrelated to whatever plans might exist for a "PSP2 phone" down the line, a leaked prototype phone in late October suggested a reveal of the actual phone device within the next two months, and, well... here we are.
True, but we're not far off a PSP2 reveal either. Smartphones are ordinarily announced within short range of release, but again, this wouldn't be a typical smartphone. If it was a PSP2 device, Sony would have to choose between announcing PSP2 within a normal kind of timeframe for a games machine (i.e. in the next month or two), or announce it with smartphone type timing. Or announce the PSP2 and keep quite about the mobile side until later. But why do that? Presumably they'd want to broadcast their wider strategy from the start - and thus naturally the phone's announcement would precede its release by a more substantial margin than is typical for phones.
Like I say, though, if this IS just a Sony Ericsson concern, this event on December, if there's no other preceding or coincidental events involving SCE or Sony, then of course that would be a strong indication that this was just a SE thing, just for a device coming out in a couple of months.
