Three Design Faults of the Vita that Sony Refuse to Recognise.
I’m sure many of you are currently enjoying your Vita Consoles with all the exploits we have been lucky enough to receive over the past year. We have been lucky enough to be given the ability to play all the classic games through VHBL, and more recently the ability to play PSP games through CEF. If you wish to know exactly what exploits are currently available, please read this article by Rashidsonic.
TN’s new exploit will also be a very nice addition to these with a plethora of features such as the ability to access PSN through the PSP Emulator Kernel. This will apparently be ported to all known exploits. If you wish to read more, please click here to read Jd’s article on the features of the new exploit.
The Vita however, is not without it’s problems or design faults. While there are few documented cases so far, it does have some issues. I will share the three I’ve noticed (and sadly have been victim to).
Seemingly Random Cracks in the Screen/LCD.
This is what happened to my Vita, sadly. I was playing it for an hour or two, then placed it down on a table and fell asleep. When I awoke the Console had not moved an inch however when I turned it on it had some purple colour across my screen. The colour changed a few times, and eventually the screen went entirely black. I then found that I actually had a crack in the Vita for no known reason. Due to this crack, Sony blame me as it apparently falls under the heading of “accidental damage”. Since I got this Console from a catalogue pay-weekly scheme; I still have to pay every single week for the next six months for a Console that I cannot play, nor really afford to fix as the repair cost is near enough that of a new Console.
There are other stories similar to my own. It seems that the unit’s sides place pressure on the LCD panel, and eventually it cracks. This is also incredibly rare, and horrid when it happens. The choice is to either replace the screen and LCD, or to get Sony to fix it (they also update the Firmware, or give you a replacement with higher Firmware) for the cost of a second Vita.
Here’s a video that has been enfuriating me since my Vita broke. These guys drop a Vita three times from four foot, and yet theirs is fine. Mine however sat on a table, nothing dropped, nothing touched it and yet I have to replace it.
Charger Burning.
There have been 23 documented cases of the Vita’s charger back overheating. The charger pack over-heats, and causes the lead to burn which can cause one of two things: The screen to crack or the charger cable being melted onto the Vita’s port. Since there has been so little documented cases Sony refuse to take the blame, even though it’s due to their faulty cables.
While looking into this issue, I found a quote from a user of the forum stating:
“my vitas screen cracked due to overheating, but because i didn’t take the accidental damage insurance, it will cost 175 dollars to repair the screen, plus shipping. i already have 5 games for the vita, and am basically forced to buy another one, since you can’t return games for anywhere near the price, and i really like the system.
i think it’s crazy that sony refuses to accept that they have manufactured faulty units when they are dealing with their customers.”
Vita Units Burning.
This can be linked to the Charger issues as there have been reported cases that the Charger overheating has caused the console to… well, melt. This has happened to a few users, and sadly will end up like this image if you’re unlucky enough to have this issue.
Ways to Prevent.
With regards to the screen randomly cracking, there is no way to prevent this. However, the other two issues are more easily avoided.
The best method to avoid this would be to simply turn it off while not using it to avoid overheating, and monitor as it charges. Do not leave it charging as you sleep, similarly do not leave it on overnight.
Anyway, I hope none of you suffer any of the issues listed above. Sony are pretty tyrannical when it comes to these issues and have often had design faults (Note the 2004 Slimline PlayStation 2 for instance). Yet they rarely take the blame. So, simply be careful with your Console.
Enjoy your Consoles, and feel lucky that you have access to the exploits, and amazing work of the Devs.
The picture of the fried Vita?
CUSTOM BURNWARE. BAM!
Strange..my ps vita is always in sleep mode because i dont have mutch time for play and is still months,not week,in this mode and when the battery is over,just recharge,no problem,and there is always one game in “standby”,now i have silent hill in sleep mode,whit firmware 1.81,mad blocker exploit,no problem,my vita is the first line product in europe,buy at launch,maybe the new line of product..
What about bleeding spots on the oled screen whil playng in the dark ? I think the firmware is a fault too , when the console came out it had a terrible webbrowser , almost unusable , even now it dose not suport full html 5 , full java , and no flash. Another hardware and software fault is the poor battery life , 4 hours on the internet , or watching videos , 8 hours of music an 3:30 hours of playing an upscale resolution game with huge pixels like uncharted seems lame …
lol really ?
actually uncharted seems to be one of the most hungry games out there. did you know it required to turn off internet in the first versions?
mine got a year right now, felt one time, no big deal since i had a hard shell protector. still looks brand new taking it out
i left my vita on charge for weeks on end whilst it was forgotten about behind the sofa. no issues here.
while i dont like sonys methods in many regards, their service to me in regards to faults has been excellent.
2 x ps1 consoles replaced
1 x ps2 replaced
1 x ps3 replaced
all my replacements were done on the doorstep, i.e. courier comes, swaps consoles and goes again. timescale was a week at most on all occasions
i did not need to argue at all about any of them.
im sure that explaining a cracked screen in a way that makes it look like a design flaw is pretty tough though
so this is the place whee the normal and smart people are,in the gaming universe.anyway i turn off vita and leave it evry night charging no problems happened
dark botch in screen is quite normal in oled screen.even galaxy s2 and tab 7.7 have this issue.both are oled screen
heating is caused by the quad core processor.design of the vita console casing is to absorb the heat of the processor.smart? not really… the heating crawled its way to every part of the vita..including the screen. with a console this small the vita will heat up at intense gaming. add the “gaming while charging”.. TADA!! cracked screen… a case protector will help dissipate heat from the console. TADA! temporary solution. aluminum case protector…anyone?
I Think one of the vita’s problem is the power button is too near the L button. Every now and then Instead of clicking on the L button and I click on the power, getting it into the sleep mode.
From back when even before the vita came out I got ahold of the specs and a video showing this so called “augmented reality”. …. Uhh so how do I use such AR? Becuase to date the camera on the vita is damn near USELESS.
hahah .. i have yet to get to play the soccer ar game cant seems to get the stadium set up right fireworks dough is the funnest i have played so far
I have had no such issue with mine, and personally, think these are one off issues rather than a general fault with the device.
Had my vita for more than a month and i see no scratch.
I have also not had issues with charging, though most of the time i charge from my laptop.
What i consider a major issue are the finger grips and their location… if i were to use the finger grips, i would effectively be gaming with my finger tips.. i never game like this. I hold the vita in the palms of my hands so my finger tips rest of the touch screen. for some games this may not be the best regarding the rear touch screen, but it is the best holding position. at least in my opinion.
I can believe the melting issue, one day I picked up my vita (it had been charging overnight) and it was so hot that I thought it was going to be fried for sure, lucky it wasn’t but imagine if I didn’t use it for a couple of days.
this has only happened once, so I’m betting it was a software issue that has since been fixed
and I can see the cracked screen due to the unit being over packed, if you look at the bottom left on the back of the vita. You will see a buldge from the unit being too packed (not sure if they fixed this but most launch models have it)
I can tell you right now, if Sony is able to prevent your system from melting by a simple firmware update. “The future” must already be here 😉
lol. LIKE^^
well if it was something like the unit keeps on charging the battery even after it was fully charged, then yes a simple firmware update could fix that.
Noob comment
no noob, the firmware controls when the vita gets charged by testing the voltage of the battery, when the proper voltage is achieved the current to the battery is shut off.
I’m not saying this is what caused the malfunction but it could be possible
I don’t see what you’re talking about dude
I have the screen cracking thing. I’ve had my vita 3 months and never dropped it but i have dark spots that only show during black loading screens.
Kay, all vitas have this, it is because of the OLED technology and is usually only noticeable on a dark screen
exactly, the screen tries to show black and as we all know very well black light doesn’t make sense, it isn’t even a flaw, just a side effect of having such a beautiful screen 😉
You must have just gotten a defective unit…. Ive manhandled the heck out of PsVita and it still works great. Took it to the work site, fell out of my pocket from 3 stories up and only the corner chipped. Dropped hot embers onto the touch screen and you cant even tell. Let a 2yo play with it, chew on, and throw it around (because Vita had no games I cared about back then so I figured why not) and still works great. The ONLY issues I have had with my PsVita was that it BLOD’d on me 3 times (which hasnt happened since I bought the unit in Feb of last year), screen would/will freeze if I link my email to the email app, and if you have just a little bit of moisture on your finger, when you touch the screen, the whole screen will spaz out and become uncalibrated. With no option to recalibrate the touch, you have to completely turn the unit off (not sleep), wipe off the screen, and turn it back on.
Manufacturing error =! Design flaw
A design flaw is something that is consistently causing problems.
I don’t believe the screen cracked in half for no reason. You’re probably leaving out important details or ignored some other factor. This does not give any indication that the design of the device could have stopped this from happening.
Manufacturing errors, on the otherhand, happen in every sector of industry. Nothing humans make is perfect.
However, that’s still an issue on sony’s end, of building the device. (which seems to be the main point of the article.)
Whether the flaw is in their console design, or their manufacturing plant design, there seems to be one somewhere, leading to some cases like this.
It is pretty awful that they won’t replace the few consoles this happens to, and in doing so earn more customer trust and loyalty.
Yes, they really should replace faulty units but I wouldn’t really blame Sony too much about the defective consoles themselves, I would suppose that it is a flaw in some devices and it seems like it might just be a short circuit but I think that given the fact that the device is super heavily packed, it might just be time to look for more precise machines.
Also, I guess the PSVita just has too much power, I have heard that we can’t crank the thing up to 2 GHz because it would catch fire, Sony just couldn’t do anything, as powerful as modern electronics are, portable devices can’t have any active cooling systems because there just isn’t enough room, we probably might see a PSVita which can go at 2 GHz in 10 years or so, when the technology to either run processors without much heat or passive cooling tech improves.
This article is wrong about overheating its caused by people getting oil from their hands in the charger slot causing it to burn the slot.
Oil from your hands should not make the charger slot burn. That is the flaw. Other handhelds handle this normal interaction just fine.
Why do you have oil on your hands when handling a touchscreen device? 😕
perhaps they meant sweat or similar, lol
You always have oil on your hands.
It’s called natural skin oil.
Getting this on the charger slot should not = fire.
F*CK YOU.
OIL = FIRE
OIL ON HANDS = FIRE
FIRE = DEATH
VITA ON FIRE? DEATH.
“Oil from your hands” is what your fingerprints are made of.
See that greasy streak when you swipe the vita’s screen? Same stuff.
If you can’t handle the charger slot with your bare fingers, (and their natural oil) that is definitely a design flaw.
Now if he’s talking about people who had *motor* oil on their hands (which I doubt), then yeah they did that to themselves. But if the skin’s natural ‘oil’ did this, serious design flaw.
well there u have it folks, DON’T oil your VITA, It will most definitely not make it run smoother 🙂
Replying without reading, a new trend?
Here let me fix that for ya:
“Well there u have it folks, don’t touch your vita’s port with your fingers and your natural skin-oils, it might break it due to bad design.”
Fixed.
Even if you just washed your hands 3 times, they have oil. Your own glands create this oil.(called sebum)
So it sounds like just touching the charger port with your (clean) fingers can break your Vita.
That should not happen.
Don’t worry McLoven, I got your joke :).
REPLYING WITHOUT C*CK IN MOUTH? NEW TREND!
WE NEED MORE BBCS
I have noticed black dots on my vita aswell, when im playing metal gear solid hd (mgs2) before the loading screen the black is lighter so the dark black dots show up.
But if you display any other colors you cant see it, it seems its semi defective and only shows up on certain levels of blacks.
Also i got my ps vita at launch aswell.
Its the OLED technology of the screen. Its on everyone’s Vita. It just happens to be part of Samsungs OLED itself.
…business slow in Wololo eh? xp
I wish they make ps vita like the psp 1k or 3k,they had the best grip and performance respectively and never broke down on me in fact I haven’t bought a vita yet and probably won’t soon will wait for vita 2
*** is true, I just got my ps vita not too long ago and when I turn it off to go to sleep and put like a cloth under it to make sure it won’t get any rear screen scratches and when I wake up the next day there were scratches. Man this is *** me a bit.
eny1 now how to install the gPSP on VHBL? I have FW 2.05 with a game exploit and I want to install the gPSP roms 🙁
There are currently not any public exploits for firmware 2.05.
I wont be able to sleep tonight….. :ddd
I think you may have got a defective unit.
I accidentally dropped my Vita on concrete (luckily I keep it in a soft cover pouch, similar to the old PSP one). It had a couple of chips on the side, but its fine nonetheless.
I’ve had my Vita since launch day, and bought a warranty on it. I’m debating on whether I should trade it in for a new Vita (and lose my UNO exploit) or just keep it as it is.
Overheating when related to charging generally is caused by short circuit.
sometimes it may be very difficult to find out what and where exactly is the problem.
Of course, if some piece came faulty its Sony to blame, but if is possible to see short circuit in pins, on the cable or console port, could prevent a waste or even an accident.
I have never had any of these problems.
But not displaying an indicator when you try to resume from standby or turning on the system is a hassle.
It must have to do with you halfway plugging in your power source.
you can’t really call them design faults if it only affects 23 or so customers, that’s like 0.001%, a design fault was the red ring (around 30% failure rate at it’s peak) or ps3 blu-ray lasers burning out (mostly the cheap ones used in the 40GB model). Not even the yello light of death is considered a design fault as it only affected a small amount of owners compared to the red ring (about 5% of consoles).
I have a prelaunch model Vita and i have had no problems with it at all. That sounds more like defective models to me. Btw posting from my Vita lol
Regardless of whether these are design flaws or manufacturing errors it’s pretty terrible that Sony won’t replace the unit. They have few enough loyal consumers as is and this practise won’t help.
I’m lucky that I live in a country (Australia) where fair trading consumer laws will protect me and the retailer I purchased from would be obligated to replace the unit.
your vitas screen cracked by looking at it …. ??? …. yeah i think someone dropped it HARD when you werent around and left it there for you to find…. lol
what with when the vita screen goes black and the blue light starts blinking i tought the thing sumhow ened up lagging wen it was in sleep mode n since the light flashs wen the live screen updates or a download is done i tought that was the case i heard i shuldent play while chargening ..if u think about it the first xbox 360 had big trouble overheating
All electronic devices mustn’t be used while charging, as that causes overheating and/or decrease in battery life. 😉
BTW I leave my PSVita charging while I’m sleeping everyday.
https://support.us.playstation.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3899/~/ps-vita-cracked-screen
They even have a page for it meaning they knw abt their design flaw
Btw Atleast the ps vita is finally cracked outside the psp emu!
lol
i always make it a habit to rest any device with a exposed screen like the vitas unexposed with its back facing up and on a soft piece of cloth underneath. i also cover them with screen protectors and clean them at least once for every i use them. with a screen as large and beautiful as the vitas leaving it exposed is almost like asking for it to be damaged. but i a little paranoid and always expect the worst things to happen.
There’s nothing wrong with mine Vita…
Just got the feeling that my htc wildfire s overheats faster… LOL… 🙂
This is the worst article I read on this site, seriously, its a biased and generalised personal experience, just because you had a defected vita that aparently cracs its own screen overnigh (loool, you might consider taking into account that you have ghosts btw) meens jack ***, i know lots of people with vitas that dont have even a dead pixel.
Its clear that most of you lack basic knowlegde about tech in general and dont even know what olead means and do.
Oh and btw gotta call the fire department just in case my vita melts during the night and burns down my house, they’l know what to do.
LooooooooooooooL
The position of the start and select buttons S****!
especially when there’s clearly plenty of room for buttons and maybe even the speakers under the screen.
This all sounds very anecdotal to me and that doesn’t mean you won’t find people with similar stories, but immediately coughing this up as a design flaw without any sort of scrutiny into the situation is pretty presumptive.
Perhaps a little more investigation is in order.
Why does he need scrutiny, to tell him this is a design flaw?
If it cracked without even touching it, he can be pretty sure it wasn’t anything he did…
Even if he theoretically had freezing temperatures wherever he lives, the device should handle that without cracking.
It could be a random error that was caused during the manufacturing process. In that case, it isnt really related to the design itself.
Yeah but errors in the manufacturing proccess is a design flaw in the factory, in my opinion. Sure, we can nitpick the author’s term, but his point is valid. When the product is flawed by no fault of the customer, sony needs to fix/replace it for free.
Especially if it’s still under warranty
I dont think it is nitpick, i just wanted to point out that there is a quite noticeable different between a design flaw and a random manufacturing error.
But sure, i would be *** if i didnt get a refund for a product that broke, and i was not the reason for why it broke. I fully agree with that.
My cookies cleared i think, and i dont remember which e-mail adress i used previously, that is why my avatar is different now.
In my opinion, your a f*cking ***.
CRY MORE. CRACKED VITA. LOL
well they say there a 4g model so i guess if u think about it there was desing flaw in the first gen of ps vita mines lags hard wen i first got it freez up ….
I’m not sure if they refuse to recognise this. I think that they take these reports seriously. But as with all electronic devices, random errors can happen. It doesnt necessarily have to do with design flaws, it could be random errors that happends at manufacturer level.
That said, it really sucks for those who experience these errors. I’m glad that i live in a country in Europe that has about 1 year warranty on pretty much all electronic devices. Paying nearly the same amount as the unit itself cost is something that i wouldnt have done myself. In that case, i think that i’d rather just buy a new one instead. Or maybe buy a used unit to save some money.
Well it’s a fault on their end causing it, and they don’t pay the replacement charge. To me, that’s refusing to recognize it.
I think the problem is that it is hard to prove if the fault was caused by the user or during manufacturing. But i fully agree that i would be *** if this happened to me and i was not the reason for that it broke. I would have demanded my money back, or demanded to get it repaired for free, eventhough it might not be easy to get it. That is why i’m glad that i live in a country where there is good warranty systems in place. But i could understand the frustration about items breaking early in their lifecycle and then you have to pay full price to get it fixed.
I don’t really like my Vita. I never wanted to purchase it, but it interested me to be able to play FF7 and chrono cross on the go. Those two reasons were not reasons enough for me to buy it, so I wasn’t. My girl on the other hand DID buy it for me. I used it to play FF7 and rayman and I’m on Homebrew right now from v 1.8(?) and chrono cross doesn’t work for it. It does work on 2.0 so I might just update. Aside from that, I leave it on all the time, charge it whenever the fack I want, and if it ever burns up, melts or cracks, well then, fack them I won’t buy another sony product period. I have a vaio that doesn’t work, and I paid 2K for it, the bluetooth is not working, some leds on it don’t turn on, I bought it from the sony store and I got the accidental plan for it and a backup disc, that when I went to reflash my OS, did not work. I restore everything on all my laptops once a year, just to get rid of *** I don’t care for but remains hidden. I had to take it back to the store and they had to do it their way. Bluetooth used to work with my cellphone jabra, which was awesome as I got to speak/hear in the games or listen to media at work without interrupting others, but now it does not recognize the proper music service on the jabra. I can use it for skype only. I’ve reloaded the drivers and still no such luck. I definitely should have gone with the lenovo I wanted…though I really wanted a laptop with a dock that had hdmi, the one I have now is parked right in front of my bravia, which is about the only thing that works. I have their 720dn receiver which is good mostly, but at times does the capacitor sound that you get when you turn a receiver on, but I didn’t turn it on and it doesn’t turn on anyways. Not an issue, but weird. Their PS3 has its own issues and PSN is routinely down. I have their tablet S which if it weren’t for the fact that I bought it, wanted the remote feature, I would have thrown it in the air and yelled pull by now. Browser crashes randomly, reboots randomly, or seemingly randomly, freezes, just like the vita completely not rootable, version 4.0, so good programmers can’t at least try their hands at making a workable OS. Even the reason I got it for, the remote, tends to suck and crash on me when I use it, which tends to be when I need it the most, to change the channel or turn on the tv. At which point I toss it on my couch and run to get my good ole trusty remote control. They’re one of those people that does everything shittily, instead of one thing perfectly. Though Google seems to be good at that. All their things are nice to look at but tend to end up being paperweights. My vita has gone unused in months and honestly, I don’t think I noticed…or missed it.
Can’t really believe the screen cracking thing. Sorry. But have you ever thought maybe some *** dropped something on it while it was charging and you weren’t paying attention? I don’t think it’s physically possible judging by the entire weight of the vita itself.
i personally dropped my Vita and it still works
heres the story:
as i am running for the bus, my vita slipped out of my pocket hit the concrete. It tumbled, and hit the concrete at least 2 more times. Then came to rest in some dirt near a tree
i guess i should count myself lucky. thanks for the info
well maybe I am a noob lol it seems that the battery itself should have a internal circuit to prevent overcharging.oh well you win some , and you lose some.