Sony details PlayStation Vita battery life

Sony has announced the estimated battery life for their next-generation handheld entertainment device at the Tokyo Game Show. Known as PlayStation Vita, the portable is capable of three to five hours of gaming, five hours of video playback and nine hours of music playback, courtesy of a 2,200 mAh battery.




CNET reports that the figures above are based on a default brightness setting, which is assumed to be somewhere in the middle of the highest and lowest setting. Additionally, Bluetooth was disabled and Wi-Fi was not utilized when calculating these estimates. Sony claims it will take two hours and 40 minutes to fully recharge Vita’s battery.
The publication notes that playback times are similar to Nintendo’s 3DS portable which boasts three to five hours of game time with 3D enabled and up to eight hours of original DS title playback.
Expected in Japan later this year and the US and Europe in early 2012, the Vita is packed with an ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core processor, SGX543MP4 + GPU, 512MB of main RAM and 128MB of video RAM. The capacitive OLED touchscreen features a resolution of 960 x 544 with 16 million colors and is centered between gaming controls on either side of the device.
There are two cameras on the handheld. The front shooter is capable of 120 FPS at 320 x 240 (QVGA) while the rear can do 60 FPS at 640 x 480 (VGA). GPS is available if you opt for the more expensive 3G model and Wi-Fi is available across the board.
Pricing for the Wi-Fi only model is $249 while the 3G variant can be had for $299.

Sony changes PSN terms to block class action lawsuits

This is interesting. In a mandatory PlayStation 3 update, Sony has slipped a change to the terms of service for the PlayStation Network so that users who accept it are basically giving up the right to take part in a class-action lawsuit against them. The new clauses, termed "Binding Individual Arbitration," mandate that any Dispute Resolution Proceedings, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted on an individual basis only.
Any outstanding class action lawsuits filed against Sony will still stand, including the class action suit filed in April over the PSN security breach. But it seems Sony is protecting itself against further litigation should it be hacked again in the future -- or perhaps if it pull another rootkit fiasco. They are in their legal right to do so, according to some analysts, but the stealthy move can't help their already tainted image in the minds of customers.

Although this could hurt consumers' chances to challenge the company in court in case of any wrongdoing, there's nothing in the terms of service preventing people from suing Sony on an individual basis.
Looking at it from another perspective, as Gamasutra notes, class action suits in the gaming world usually benefit a few (read: lawyers) while members of the class have to make do with the crumbles (i.e. The Hot Coffee class action suit against Take-Two, which netted its members a replacement game disc or from $5 to $35 in cash).
In any case, users can also opt-out of the binding arbitration and class action waiver by contacting Sony in writing within 30 days of agreeing to the new terms. The full list of changes to the agreement is available here (PDF). It's worth noting that PSN users are required to agree to the new terms upon signing in to be able to use the service.