The trouble with selling stuff in one of those meet-up exchanges is that you'll never know for certain who you're dealing with. For all you know, you might be dealing with the customer from hell. In this case, he was from American Fork, Utah. His name is Jose Eduardo Espinosa-Arellano and he bought a PSP from a 17-year-old. When it didn't work as advertised, he did what every rational individual would do - take the kid for a ride.

Homebrew dev ccpspita seems to be making a lot of headway into building a working PSP phone. QJ.NET reader zero-one has informed us that the dev has managed to attach a Telit GPRS module to a PSP, going one step closer to letting users send and receive calss and text messages on their PSPs. More info, pics, and a video after the jump.

It's been well over a year since uberjack updated SMS Plus PSP, but who's complaining? It's here! SMS Plus PSP is a Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator for the PSP. It still doesn't have Wi-Fi or Ad Hoc support, but it does have new features. Details after the link.

Download: SMS Plus PSP v1.2.5

PSP coder uberjack just announced that the SMS Plus emulator homebrew has received an update. This latest release has been labelled as v1.2.3, and features improvements such as enhanced emulation speed, and various other bug fixes:

• 20% speedup in emulation speed with new 8-bit video rendering
• Option to turn off FM emulation (an additional 48% improvement in emulation speed - all games now play at 100% speed with VSync enabled)
• Various small bug fixes
  

In case you're wondering, this application is actually uberjack's PSP port of Charles MacDonald's SMS (Sega Master System) Plus emulator, with this release coded in C. Installation and usage details should be available in the readme provided with the download - make sure to check that to know how to run SMS Plus. Also make sure to check out uberjack's other emulator's works, namely ColEM-PSP and fMSX-PSP.

Download: SMS Plus PSP v1.2.3

A new homebrew emulator for the Sony PlayStation Portable has been added to Uberjack's list of homebrew emulator releases. This time, the fMSX-PSP and ColEM-PSP coder has released a Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator called SMS Plus PSP.

SMS Plus PSP is a PSP port of Charles MacDonald's SMS Plus emulator. The coder says that SMS Plus PSP was written in C and uses GU (Graphical Utility toolkit) for rendering. This is an initial release, so we don't have a changelog to post yet. If you encounter any bugs or would like to make a suggestion, click on the Via link below.

Don't forget to read the readme file included in the download. There, you'll find all the pertinent info including installation and usage instructions.

Download: SMS Plus v1.2.1

Mooser has just posted an update for Ontgem, his email application for the Sony PSP, over on our PSP Development forums. This latest update adds an SMS messaging feature and bumps Ontgem up to version 0.02.

Ontgem is, as stated earlier, a simple email application for the Sony PSP handheld system. Mooser coded this homebrew app in LUA, and it uses Youresam's netlib as well as Cancan's port of Danzel's Danzeff OSK. Here are some of the controls that aren't displayed in the app:

• Save (needs to be done in order to send) - Select button
• Back - Start button

You can download Ontgem v0.02 by clicking on the download link below. For bug reports, comments, and suggestions, don't hesitate to discuss this release on QJ's PSP Development forums by clicking on the Visit link below.

Download: Ontgem v0.02
Visit: QJ's PSP Development forums

PSP homebrew coder xchinamanx dropped by the QJ.Net Forums earlier to announce that the PSP Phone Tool app has just been upgraded to version 1.00.

The PSP Phone Tool homebrew application, for those asking, allows PSP users to send text messages to over 20 different phone servers via the PSP's WiFi connection and built-in web browser - confirmation on whether it runs fine on Fullscreen Browser will be greatly appreciated. Now, moving on to the ever-important changelog:

• Fixed rogers html error
• Fixed telus "send" link
• Added txtforfree
• Added pageme
• Added CBFSMS (for UK)
• Added Gizmosms
• Added new menu/logo
• Added new instructions in phone notify(also resized)
• Gizmo SMS have all networks, so it'll work on every country and every service. (some not tested) note that phone number format must be with space.
• Canada/US users : if you cant find the phone service, you can use gizmo sms.
• UK users : you can use CBFsms which is mainly for the UK, gizmo will also work
• Other country users : again Gizmo sms will work, but pageme might work too.
  

As the bundle lacks a README, we strongly advise readers and future users to head over to xchinamanx's release thread over at the QJ.Net Forums - full installation and usage instructions await there. The download awaits below, which should be your next stop. Enjoy!

Download: PSP Phone Tool v1.00
Visit: PSP Development Forum

Brunni has updated his MMSPlus Sega Master System and Game Gear Emulator for the PSP today to version 1.1. This emulator is undoubtedly one of the best SMS emulators around, with no shortage of updates to add new features and bug fixes so that you can play all of your roms on your PSP at full speed.

MMSPlus has been coded in C and was based off the original source of SMSPlus, a PC SMS emulator by Charles Macdonald. You'll also be pleased to know that most SMS games run perfectly at 166 MHz and Game Gear at 133 MHz. Here's whats been added since the last release:

• Added VGM support for the menu (VGMs are SMS music files)
• Added VGM GD3 tag support
• Added Screenshot option. Screenshots will be saved as png to a MMSPlus folder in Photo.
• Major GUI update
• Disabled returning to game after choosing exit from the menu. Previously after choosing exit from the menu it would show the last game loaded briefly before returning to the xmb.
• A number of minor bug fixes

Thanks for the tip Mister Chief!

  

Download: [MMSPlus SMS Emulator v1.1]
Discuss: [Forum release thread]

[Bo]Trops has released another version of his homebrew Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator called PSPMaster today, updating it to v009 beta4. PSPMaster is one of the favourite SMS/Game Gear emulators for the PSP for a couple of reasons, firstly for the huge feature list and the amount of compatible ROMs, and secondly for the amount of updates that [Bo]Trops fires out on a regular basis. The last version of PSPMaster was released not even a week ago! Here's the v009 beta4 changelog:

• New high definition renders. Be sure to change the CPU clock to 300MHz to get a decent speed.
• Some minor changes

Now the changelog isn't massive, but the addition of new high definition renders is a huge update and as long as your PSP's battery is charged up enough to run at 300Mhz then you will notice a significant graphics improvement. This is one of the few emulators that still comes in firmware 1.0 and 1.5 formatted eboots so make sure you download the correct one!

Download: [PSPMaster v009 beta4 fw1.5]
Download: [PSPMaster v009 beta4 fw1.0]

Thanks to yoyomacy, text2phone support is now available for PSP eMail and SMS v2 by cools (thanks for the heads up!). It connects to cellphone and an ordinary home phone pretty quickly, even if tested several times. This enables more stability on your emails and SMS.

To get text2phone running, your lua player must be WiFi capable. The Up/Down control in the main screen allows you to choose between To, From, the Subject and the Message, while the Analog pad allows you to choose letters using custom danzeff port. The X button on the Send Screen allows you to send, while the Triangle button lets you leave the Send Screen.

Download: [PSP eMail and SMS v2 Text2phone]

Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]