Playstation Portable Phone Not Coming Soon

This week, Skype announced a version of its phone-like for the Sony Playstation Portable.  However, that's as close as the PSP is going to get to becoming a smartphone for some time.

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, Merran Wrigley, a Sony Ericsson VP, said that her company doesn't believe that, given the current state of mobile technology, it would be able to create a phone worthy of the Playstation brand.

Sony Ericsson's vision for this device is more than just a current PSP with a phone grafted onto it. It feels this device should offer features like quick game downloads and multi-playing gaming, but the company doesn't believe that cellular-wireless networks are ready for this yet.

Still, a Playstation Phone is something Sony Ericsson will continue to look into.

Skype for the PSP

For those who want to use the current PSP as a phone, there's the VoIP solution coming later this month from Skype.

This will allow users to make free voice calls to other Skype users, see which friends are online and available to talk, and -- with the purchase of Skype Credit -- make inexpensive SkypeOut calls and receive SkypeIn calls to regular phones.

Naturally, for this to work the device needs to be connected to a Wi-Fi network.

More information is available on skype.com.

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