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.