The front and back cameras are low-res enough that nobody is likely to use them much for taking photos or videos, but serve very well in their primary function: enabling the augmented-reality feature of the device.

Having touch capabilities on the back of the Vita as well as on the front display is an interesting innovation, one which I found cumbersome at first but gradually grew able to handle with reasonable adeptness. But I have unusually large hands, so your mileage may vary. It fits comfortably in two hands, with miniaturized versions of the PlayStation controls that work very well, even if using the tiny dual analog joysticks did make my hands cramp up after a while. Not only have I let my 9- and 11-year-old kids play with it, but they and I have dropped it a few times and it still looks brand new.

Vita's tight design and relative lack of moving parts work to enhance its durability. It's nothing if not sleek, small enough to fit in a pocket (albeit a fairly big one) but with a screen that can't help but remind one of the iPhone 4's Retina display, only bigger – though the Vita's screen has slightly worse resolution than the Retina, at 960 x 544 the difference is largely unnoticeable. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, of course, but I can say that the Vita is a remarkable achievement in handheld gaming devices.

Without a new version of the PlayStation console announced, Sony is clearly counting on the PS Vita to restore some of the prestige lost in the gaming world with the troubles dogging its PlayStation Network. The Sony PlayStation Vita officially launches today, bringing with it over two dozen games and a host of promises.

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