I played a PS Vita yesterday at a demo kiosk for a while, and the first thought I had was “oh no, these buttons are too small.”

I don't own a smart phone, a tablet, an e-reader, a 3DS, or any other current high priced portable. I've thought a lot about getting an iPhone or at least an iPod touch, but the lack of buttons and a d-pad really bothers me. What I want is an iPhone with buttons and the Vita seemed poised to hit the spot.

But it hit me as soon as I held it what a let-down the controls are. The buttons seem tinier than the ones on the Gameboy Advance, and they're cramped. They actually make the DS buttons seem graciously large and spacious.

The D-pad is also novel for a Sony product in that the center of it isn't submerged under the plastic like usual; its so tiny that this wouldn't have been possible. Amusingly enough that may make it better than a typical PS d-pad.

The analog sticks are the second problem. You have no idea how tiny they actually are until you hold the device in your hand, but the sensation is ridiculous. Normally with an analog stick your thumb should be able to comfortably and assuredly rest on top of it to move it around, but since this one is too small for that it felt as if my thumb was always slipping off a bit and pushing it from the sides. It was far different than the 3DS circle pad, which is concave and captures the base of the thumb. The analog nub feel like some cute, non-functioning miniature made for a craft fair. I lack the experience to say they were uncomfortable or unusable, but the feel was discombobulating.

The nubs are also so close to the buttons that it seems difficult to avoid hitting them while pressing the buttons or the d-pad. Its as if Sony didn't give a damn about people with large hands (perhaps moving the elements apart would have affected the look). I can literally lay the top half of my thumb down across the analog stick and press all four face buttons simultaneously.

The irony of it all is the Vita otherwise felt satisfyingly large and substantial in my hands. The screen is wonderful. It's bigger than an iPhone- I'm not sure if I'd want to browse the web or read on it for long hours compared to a tablet but it probably has the nicest screen of any portable game system ever made. The touch controls on both the front and back are wonderful. The triggers were also nice.

But man its a shame that the traditional controls aren't rock-solid when the rest of the package is this expensive. How it is that two decades after the SNES and Saturn giant companies still have trouble with d-pads and face buttons?

Finally, after using my wife's iPhone for the past six months I can't help but notice how zippy it is to switch and start up apps compared to the PS3. Since the Vita has more system RAM than the PS3 I hoped that Sony would have focused on making the transitions quicker, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. Every application took what felt like ten or so seconds to load before it even showed loading screens, and even then it was half a minute (at least) of credits and menus before the game started. For some reason the demo kiosk had sound disabled, which was really stupid, because if I'd at least heard music or something when the games were loading it would've made it seem more responsive. To be fair maybe the games I tried all took a bit longer to load than will be the norm (just like Infinity Blade takes longer than normal to load on an iPhone). Going back to the home screen from within an app was at least quicker than accessing the PS3's OS menu from within an app.