• Posted June 22nd, 2012 at 04:05 EDT by Steven Williamson
• 5 Comments

There’s much more to PlayStation Vita than first meets the eye. Yes, you can just take it straight out of the box, charge it up and get on with the gaming, but there are also a few tweaks you can make here and there to get the most out of your handheld.

Without further ado, here are five essential tips:

1. Optimize your battery life
PS Vita’s battery drains quickly, so everyone should look at optimizing the battery life so that it doesn’t suddenly power down when you’re in the middle of an intense fire-fight.

You can do this by following five simple steps:
- Lower screen brightness
- Disable system music
- Disable mobile network
- Close apps
- Mute

For an explanation of why these steps are important, and to find out how to go about changing these settings, check out our article: 5 tips to a longer PlayStation Vita battery life

2. Customize the interface
You can totally customize the look of your PlayStation Vita’s home screen. Touch and hold the screen anywhere to enter Edit mode. You can now rearrange the icons by sliding them across the screen, so you can put all your favourite games and features on the top panel to save you searching around, or group them as you please.

You can also delete items that you aren’t going to use, which will free up some memory for features and games that you do want to play, and you can add new pages to your home screen, which comes in handy if you don’t like icons too cluttered.

To truly transform your interface you can also change the background. Select a background (approx. 960x544), either from a screenshot or photo taken on PS Vita, or from your PC (you can transfer a photo via the supplied USB cable) and tap on the icon at the bottom right of the screen to select your image. This gives your PS Vita a more personal feel.

                

3. Access your browser while playing a game
This tip is short and sweet, but may encourage you to use your browser more. One of the most frustrating things about PS Vita is having to exit a game in order to access the browser. Save yourself a headache by downloading the LiveTweet app. Simply open the URL link via LiveTweet and you won’t have to exit your game. Hassle-free browsing at last! We’ve used this technique a few times to check out walkthroughts – yeah, we cheat.

4. Access the PlayStation Store in other territories
Whether you’re in North America, Europe or Japan each PlayStation Store will have something a little different to offer, and sometimes they’ll have demos that aren’t yet available in your territory.

To access stores in different regions you’ll have to create another PSN account. It’s the address that is important, but you simply need to choose an address in the country where you would like to access the store.

We wouldn’t recommend that you just go on the internet and find out any random address in that country. That would be wrong. Hopefully, you’ll know someone on your friend’s list who can help you out – perhaps with a relative’s address who isn’t likely to have a PSN account.

5. Get yourself a PS Vita Official Portable Charger
We can’t reiterate enough how quickly the battery drains on PS Vita. If you plan to go on the move with your handheld a lot, then invest in the official portable charger.

It has a rechargeable battery and will give you an extra 4-7 hours worth of gaming while on the move. We’ve found this accessory invaluable on long flights and train journeys.

Do you have any PS Vita top tips? Let us know in the community forums…