Over the past few months, I've spotted something a little odd and unexpected happening to Sony's old PlayStation Portable. There's been no corporate push, no announcement of the truly portable Sony handheld we used to hope for (sorry, Portal). Instead, through something far less predictable, considering it's 2026, people are
It’s pretty great, as long as you’re willing to use it the way it’s designed. The camera isn’t great, and the screen refresh rate is too low to play video. I often carry a small mirrorless camera around as well, so I don’t really need that! I have it almost entirely stock other than adding a podcast app and a better notes app. The e-ink display is really nice for reading, and even though I prefer physical books, there are a lot of free e-books available!
Your mention of people commenting about your camera reminded me of it, because I’ve had the chance to talk to a lot of people about digital minimalism because of that. It seems I run into quite a number of people who are either fed up with the constant attention grabbing from their phone, or realize they have an addiction to it.
You’re selling me on it. It would make me carry a camera around even more.
I think my biggest issue would be banking, authentication, and a few “locked down” iOS-only apps.
Another is quick access to the camera for sharing, which I could do with the microSD slot or an external reader, I guess. But it’d be more clunky.
So I’d need to keep an iPhone around anyway, unfortunately. But I could certainly pare it down with some discipline.
Yeah, the banking and things like that probably wouldn’t work well or at all. My previous phones were all de-Googled android, and a lot of that type of thing didn’t work without Google Play Services. This phone is also a custom version of Android without the Google bits, so it would probably be the same issue.
The photo sharing I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of ideas on, other than what you mentioned. It is possible to add non Mudita apps, so you might be able to get a camera app working. I know the Olympus/OM Systems app (the camera brand I use) wouldn’t work on my other phones due to having the Google services stripped out of them though.