In-Game Music – Forgot about this feature? Yep, you can now play your music in the background while doing virtually anything else on the Vita (that includes games!) Just launch the Music app and play whatever your heart desires, press the PS Button, and then seamlessly move to another app with the music still playing in the background.
Hold the PS Button for Quick Settings – Speaking of In-game music, there is a way to change music volume and move to the next song without even leaving your game & going back to the music app, among several other quick features. If you hold down the PS Button for a few seconds, this menu will slide up with quick settings for music, screen brightness, party, and microphone settings, neato!
Screenshots – You can take in-game screenshots for most games by pressing the PS Button and the Start button at the same time, that photo will then be saved in your photo’s app to view!
Customizing Live Area (The Home Screen) – It’s kinda like the iPhone, if you hold down an application button for a few seconds, all of your apps will start jiggling and you will now be in edit mode, where you can move any app icon where your heart desires and even place them in cool patterns around the screen, the cooler part is that you can set a different background for each and every section – like if I wanted all my games grouped in one section with a red background, and then my PSN related apps in another section with a blue background, that can be done!
Nicer-Looking PSP Games – When you download PSP games off the store, they will already look nicer on the Vita’s OLED screen, but if you hold down the touchscreen for a few seconds, you will be greeted with a menu to make your PSP game look even better with a “bilateral filtering” option and a “color space” option, note that some games will look better than others with these settings activated.
Panels (PSN Profile Backgrounds) – On PS3, you are able to customize your PSN profile colors with 16 different colors to choose from, the Vita takes this a massive leap forward – If you go to your Vita’s settings app and then choose PSN, Account Information, then Panel, you will have the ability to choose a really cool design to go behind your PSN profile name, but it gets better! Once you choose a panel design on Vita, if you log into your PS3, your panel color will change to a new, custom color that corresponds to the base color of your panel design on Vita, the cool thing about this is that nobody can select some of these colors strictly on PS3, so people on your friends list without a Vita will be jealous of your amazing, magical custom color.
Emergency Shutdown! – If your Vita freezes or the touchscreen or other hardware may not be responding, simply hold down the power button for 10 seconds and your Vita will turn itself off.
Download those Patches! – Games will release patches from time to time on the Vita, but it’s not as obvious that they actually need to be updated this time around, before starting/resuming a game, you will see some options at the top of the game’s dedicated app page, it is an image at the upper-left with an orange down arrow. Simply press it to update.
Changing your Lock Screen Image – Wanna know how to change that default lock screen image? Simply bring some images over to your Photos app and then select the photo you want, select the “…” button at the bottom right of the photo and select “use as start screen”.
Quick Mute – Pressing and holding down the volume up and Volume down buttons at the same time will mute your Vita.
Importance of Downloading in Sleep Mode – Downloading games while the console is in sleep mode can be done, but it’s weird – if you put the console into sleep mode yourself (pressing the power button) the download will stop, but if you let the Vita put itself into sleep mode (Not touching it for 1 minute), it will keep downloading your game, it’s odd, but that’s how it works, something to keep in mind!