We all know the rumors. By now most of us have seen the patents. But are these the real, official Sony Ericsson PSP phone specs?

Well, if this scanned white paper is to be believed, the PSP phone is going to be made by Sony Ericsson, not just Sony. It will feature the “full PSP experience” and also have advanced phone features. Some of the specs include: 4.3″ 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD display at 480 x 272 pixels and 16.77 million colors, 2 megapixel camera, Built-in web browser, Built-in podcasting, Flight mode, Bluetooth connectivity, Memory Stick Micro/microSD memory card slot, Streaming audio/video, Video calling, Speakerphone, Alarm clock, calculator, calendar, and more.

Sony’s patent application for a haptic touchscreen composed of “tactile pixels” shows former Sony Computer Entertainment chief Phil Harrison as the inventor. It also has a bunch of references to potential use in “a game device” and to “game events,” so it seems fairly obvious that it was developed as an idea for PSP.

The patent app describes a haptic feedback system that seems pretty complicated. The pixels themselves are capable of moving up and down, providing feedback to user actions. It’s certainly interesting, but we’re not gonna hold our breath waiting for this to hit the consumer market anytime soon. We wouldn’t mind being wrong though.

As far as originality, you won’t find any here. When they designed this Maxx Digital portable DVD player, they simply re-did the PSP for some reason I can’t fathom. Not that it’s not a good looking PSP. It is. It’s just a PSP, not a DVD player design. I just don’t like all my stuff to look like PSP’s, that’s all I’m saying.

The PDV-8500BLK features a nice 8.5-inch LCD widescreen, and will play videos in DVD, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW, VCD and SVCD formats. It’s also got support for JPEG, MP3 and MPEG4 files via a built-in SD, MMS/MS card reader slot. Strangely it doesn’t play video games at all. And no UMD discs. It will cost you $120.

The portable is getting Google search, with stored memory of your last 20 searches. Another feature is that video played from a memory stick can be sped up or slowed down to suit your needs. Nothing very earth shattering, but welcomed nontheless.

Good news for those who want more games on the iPhone. Super Monkey Ball has 110 stages and your choice of four monkeys. They showed a quick run-through during the keynote, and it looks like the graphics are superior to anything else on the phone. Pangea also demoed some games, like Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally, where you can use the iPhone as the steering wheel. Some are describing the games as having very nice high-quality graphics, and being “totally playable”. Digital Legends was also on hand and demoed a God of War-type game that only took two weeks to develop. That one supposedly has graphics that fall between the DS and PSP. Expect that one in September.

Once again Japan gets all the cool things. Like this latest, the Cinnabar Red PlayStation 2. It should be available on July 3rd, for the equivalent of $155 US. Perfect if you love rocking red, or if you have some sort of Hell theme happening. In fact, it would probably be at home in Hellboy’s house. Hell. Damnation. The damned. Red is the color of anger you know. I think it’s affecting me in a strange way.

We’ve seen several versions of the PSP over the years, but until now none have been geared toward diehard Football fans. This one is for all the Madden fans, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of one of the most popular sports titles ever.

The bundle will have a limited-edition “Metallic Blue” PSP with the Madden NFL 09 game; “NFL: In Just One Play” on UMD Video; a voucher to download Beats (a new way to interact with your music collection on your PSP system. It uses a beat-tracking technology to create gameplay from any song the player supplies) from the PlayStation Store and a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo. So if you’re a huge Football fan, the bundle will be available on August 12 for $199.

If you have a PSP slim and you’re up to date with the firmware you may have been thinking about taking advantage Skype through the Wi-Fi connection on your PSP. One of the hurdles might have been getting your hands on a headset to use with the Skype feature, which seems to have taken an awful long time. In fact, you may remember that the Japan launch was delayed due to something wrong with the headset microphone.

Well, now SCEA has finally come around and yesterday launched the Skype compatible headset to make it easier to get some free VoIP calls from your PSP – one more thing that makes that portable game console just plain cool. The headset comes with stereo sound and a microphone for $30, which is more than we had heard, but at least its available now.

PSP Skype Headset via PSPFanBoy

SONY just announced release dates for the long-awaited PlayTV add-on for the PS3 and Go!View video service for the PSP. PlayTV will allow the PS3’s hard drive to record TV shows thanks to it’s dual TV tuners. The included software has a 7-day programming guide, and recorded programs can be viewed remotely over Wi-Fi or transferred to the PSP.

SONY’s Go!View video service for the PSP will be subscription-based or on a pay-per-view system. Users can download TV content to their PSP from a dedicated website.

Pssst. Hey. You. The guy with all the gadgets and the huge gut. Put down the comic book and the PSP, give me a sec. Wanna charge your gadgets and get some exercise at the same time? Maybe get a girl? Check this out.

This pedal-charging device from Japan is like a Power Stepper but even better. Apparently, it will produce enough electricity to power mobile phones, media players, or any number of other gadgets. Just don’t tell anyone you have it, otherwise you will be charging stuff like a hamster in it’s wheel.

Dan Middle bought Sony’s UX UMPC and found it to be severely lacking when it came to portable gaming. He did what any of us would have done, he took things into his own hands by hacking a cheap USB gamepad. The end result is a set of controls that make available all eight buttons with a single hand, while the other hand is free to aim with the UX’s mouse controls.

The gamepad has been attached to a CF dummy card, slotting into the UX’s CF port. He did some testing and found that it’s pretty decent to use. Vista even recognizes it as a gaming peripheral. I’m not sure if this spells trouble for the PSP and DS Lite, but it’s pretty cool. Video below.

Want your PSP to glow like it just set off the geiger counter? These replacement covers will give it an otherworldly glow. Just put your PSP in daylight for a few minutes, and then switch off the lights and watch your system glow.

The XCM Magic Night Glow face plate attaches to the front of your Sony PSP (slim model only. Sorry fatties.), and gives you a cool lights off look. They come in a variety of colors, including pearl, yellow, blue, red, green, and pink. Most of them glow in a different hue when in the dark.

If Sony were to partner with Apple for their next portable, all-in-one gaming device, the result might look something like this beautiful and sexy droolworthy beast called iWish.

Mat Brady made this mockup, and says that he calls this the iWish because he wishes Sony would get it’s act together and improve the PSP. He makes a good point about many companies doing amazing and innovative things these days, yet sadly, the only innovative thing to happen to the PSP since 2005 was that it got a little slimmer. Can’t argue with that.

The studios won’t like this device one bit. The MZK-NAS02SG1T network attached storage device from Planex. The $524 1TB Gigabit Ethernet block claims “universal access” for all your devices, courtesy of its DigiJuke browser, searching and tagging BitTorrent and YouTube content you want downloaded in the appropriate PSP and iPod (MPEG-4), Wii (FLV), or TV (MPEG-2) format for in-home or portable viewing.

The NAS will also stream audio and video to your iTunes laptops or desktops, DLNA TV, Xbox 360, or other compliant device in the home. A USB 2.0 jack offers one-touch dubbing of USB sticks while a second around back offers storage expansion. It ships with a pair of 3.5-inch 500GB drives, which you may want to swap out for higher capacity drives at a later date.

PlayStation has partnered with Sky to create a new video-on-demand download service called Go!View. As in…Go and view. Very clever. Those guys who name stuff really earned their money on that one. It will allow users to create TV schedules for their PSPs, completely tailored to suit the users individual needs and tastes.

You’ll be able to choose from a wide range of stuff like comedy, entertainment, sports and movies. You download it from your PC and watch wherever and whenever you damn well like. Never miss anything ever again. It works on a subscription or pay-per-view basis.