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TOKYO--The official Japanese launch for Sony's PlayStation Portable is still a week away, but we got ahold of a retail unit--the value pack--today through a prerelease auction conducted by Sony. While we haven't gotten hold of any games yet, Sony's versatile portable unit does a lot more than just play games. As a result, we've started putting the anticipated portable system through its paces with an included demo disc full of media (the highlights of which you can see on our "all updates" page).

The first impression that we got from actually holding the PSP outside of the dimly lit showrooms where we've previously seen it was that the handheld is slick and well designed. The most unique thing about the PSP's body design is that there are no separations between the plastic panel used on the LCD screen and the rest of the handheld's front surface. That is, the PSP's front surface is simply one huge plastic panel. Therefore, the screen cover is transparent, and the rest of the area is black. Complementing the PSP's front surface are its buttons, which are actually transparent if you take a look at them from the side of the handheld.

The PSP uses a proprietary 3.6V (1800mAh) lithium ion battery that fits into the back of the handheld. Weighing around 40 grams, the battery is light and doesn't affect the overall weight of the system. Unlike with general alkaline or nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries, you won't have a problem inserting the PSP's battery, because it's keyed to prevent you from orienting it improperly. This notch also works as the battery's connection to the system, and you can see three metallic connectors if you check the place where the battery fits into the PSP. Though it's been previously reported that the PSP would charge up by being placed on a special charger rack (like with some digital cameras and shavers), the package came with a standard AC adapter. Charging the battery completely took two hours and 24 minutes. (Please note: We'll have an additional report on overall battery life soon.)

To turn the PSP's power on, you'll slide a switch on the right side of the handheld. You can put the handheld into sleep mode at any time by sliding this switch again. To turn off the PSP's power completely, you'll need to hold the switch for about 10 seconds. The power switch also features a hold mode that allows you to lock the buttons on the PSP so that you don't accidentally press them while watching a movie or listening to music.

According to our calculations, the unit weighs in at 282 grams (around 10 ounces), with its battery and Memory Stick Duo. By comparison, the Nintendo DS weighs 276 grams (9.7 ounces). The two handhelds seemed to weigh about the same when we compared them side by side, although the PSP seemed to be a little lighter because you hold it with both hands versus holding it with one hand, which is the case with the Nintendo DS. (The opposite hand is used to employ the stylus for the DS).

The booting process for the PSP is similar to the PlayStation 2. You'll first be greeted by a Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. logo, and if you have a Universal Media Disc inserted, you'll see a PSP logo immediately thereafter, in addition to hearing a boot-up sound. When we checked the booting time for our PSP using the demo UMD disk that came with our package, we saw that the handheld took about 25 seconds to get to the disc's menu screen. The booting time was shortened to eight seconds when we tried launching the PSP with no UMD. The PSP goes directly to its user menu when there's no UMD inside, which is similar in behavior to the PS2. When we inserted the UMD after the PSP was already powered on, it took five seconds for a UMD icon to appear on the games menu, and it took 20 seconds for the game to load when we selected this icon. Meanwhile, loading a UMD movie took less time. Consequently, it took around six seconds before the screen appeared.