PSP vs. Nintendo DS which one will have PDA functionality first?

PSP or Nintendo DS? April 17th 2005
Recently I’ve decided that my aging Palm m500 just isn’t cutting it anymore. I’ve been looking at some of the great new PDA’s out on the market, and I’ve come to the conclusion the technology has moved along far enough that the cost to benefit ratio for upgrading has tipped in favor of the upgrade. But a couple of new developments recently have me considering moving in an unconventional direction for my next PDA.

Both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP have been introduced to the market over the past six months. And it appears that there is a possibility for both machines to move into the “hybrid” mobile gaming / PDA category. But they seem to be making this switch through very different methods.

Let’s take a look at the Nintendo DS first. With a touch screen enabled display on the lower half of the unit, and WiFi already in place, it wouldn’t take much to make this a competent PDA replacement. Additionally a rumor has been going around that Nintendo has licensed a version of Palm OS from the struggling PalmOne corporation. And even if that rumor is accurate, there has been an official disclosure that Summitsoft is developing an app for the DS entitled Organizer Plus.

One also has to take into consideration the fact that Nintendo had the foresight to make the DS reverse compatible with the Gameboy Advance cartridges. That immediately adds over 500 titles to its possible game library. (nothing to sneeze at)

On the other hand the PSP, also has WiFi -and although it doesn’t have a touch screen- Logic3 just recently announced that it will be releasing a USB powered mini keyboard which may be a superior input device than a touch screen anyways.

And if the rumors about the leaked “update” from Sony are correct, they’re in the process of developing a web browser for a future firmware update. (Although if you try to use the file that got leaked all it will do is fry your system!!)

There also seems to be an incredibly strong culture of hackers, busily at work figuring out all sorts of ways to take this versatile device, and turn it into digital swiss army knife.

Some of the more impressive hacks I have seen so far are:

Tapping into a hidden web browser inside a game called wipeout pure
Moving Tivo recordings to a flash memory disc to play movies from
Using a conversion tool to modify the PSP to accept the cheaper (and more readily available) 1st generation memory sticks (as opposed to more expensive, and smaller capacity memory stick duo.)
There are even a group of programmers currently considering trying to port linux to the PSP!

So I find myself in an predicament, in that both units clearly have the hardware that could allow them to perform all the functions of my PDA, but in neither case does the software appear to be there quite yet. It will be interesting to see what Sony and Nintendo have to show us at this years E3 convention. I guesss I'll wait until then before I make my choice.