A Brief History Of The Sony PSP

The Sony PSP comes out on sale in Japan in October 2004 for ¥19,800 for the basic model and ¥24,800 for the value version. It sells 200,000 units on the first day.

In March 2005 the Sony PlayStation Portable launches in North America for $249, approximately $20 more than the Japanese price and $100 more than the Nintendo DS. 500,000 PSP units are sold in the first two days.

The UK version of the PSP is released (1000 series) in September of the same year for £179, at the time over $100 more than the US price. All 185,000 units sell out in the first three hours doubling the Nintendo DS record on launch.

In June 2007 the next generation of Sony's PSP is announced (2000 series) as the 33% lighter, 19% thinner PSP-2000 and is the first of the Slim and Light series. It supports USB charging, has a composite TV-out and twice the RAM taking the memory up to a healthy 64MB. The screen is brighter and the UMD speedier to load.

In September 2007 the Sony PlayStation Portable-2000 series goes on sale worldwide.

The PSP-3000 is announced in August 2008. The 3000 series is virtually identical to the previous 2000 series version, but does feature an improved LCD screen with a better contrast, a faster response time and an anti-reflective coating.

In October 2008 The PSP-3000 series version goes on sale worldwide

The new PSP Go officially launched in June 2009, the latest Sony PSP version comes with Blue tooth, a smaller 3.8-inch screen and at 43% lighter than the original PlayStation Portable. The UMB has vanished and instead is replaced by 16GB of internal flash memory for digital downloads plus a Memory Stick Micro port.

In October 2009 the PSP Go is released in the US and the UK.

In March 2010, 60 million PSP units reported sold worldwide in total making this console a true global phenomen.

The PlayStation Go is the fourth model / version of Sony's hugely successful console and with technology changing all the time it will be interesting to see what Sony can come up with next for the PSP.

PlayStation Portable LCD screen replacement

This is a brief Youtube video that I found very useful when I first started opening up and repairing PlayStation Portable consoles. This video goes through how to open and and replace a LCD screen on a 2000 series PSP. (Slim & Lite)

How To Open A PSP (2000 series)

This is based on opening up a 2000 series PlayStation Portable.

Much is the same as opening a 1000 series PlayStation Portable, there are still seven screws you need to remove although not in the same positions as the forementioned 1000 series.

There are only two screws in the battery compartment, pictured below

There are a further two screws at the top of the console

One on the bottom

and lastly two more on the other side of the UMD door.

So there are the seven screws, again the only tool you need to remove these screws is a Phillips 000 screwdriver. Once you have removed the above screws you can remove the front faceplate and then continue to do whichever repair is required, of these I intend to go through in more detail in future posts.