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Kingbradley6
Pandora - Ultra portability without sacrificing capability

Well my friend told me he had just ordered his Pandora so I decided to look it up and it looks quite nice.

Specification...

QUOTE
* ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
* 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
* PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
* 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
* Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
* Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
* Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
* 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
* Around 10+ Hours battery life


The price is not too bad either, unfortunately though the preorders have just stoppedo. It looks okay in my opinion, I just wonder whether it performs as good as they say it does. I may think about buying one when they are released.

It seems like a mix between a laptop, Eee PC and PSP.



Check it out at: http://www.openpandora.org/

Reply with your thoughts on it...
Acid
hmm i'm not sure exactly what this would be used for?

Just web surfing? I feel an iphone or itouch would be better...

not sure what market this could be geared at.
Stobbo
QUOTE (Acid @ Oct 10 2008, 09:59 PM) *
hmm i'm not sure exactly what this would be used for?

Just web surfing? I feel an iphone or itouch would be better...

not sure what market this could be geared at.

I am thinking the same, I'd personally rather go for an eeePC/MSI Wind etc. pfft.gif

The specs make it seem pretty useless for anything, maybe I am missing something?
Bob-sama
Looks interesting. tongue.gif I don't think I'll get one though: my EeePC 900 is plenty for mobility, and I have never been much of a handheld console fan.
djpailo
QUOTE (Stobbo @ Oct 10 2008, 10:01 PM) *
QUOTE (Acid @ Oct 10 2008, 09:59 PM) *
hmm i'm not sure exactly what this would be used for?

Just web surfing? I feel an iphone or itouch would be better...

not sure what market this could be geared at.

I am thinking the same, I'd personally rather go for an eeePC/MSI Wind etc. pfft.gif

The specs make it seem pretty useless for anything, maybe I am missing something?


Agreed.

Not to mention the hideous looks IMO.
Acid
actually it would be enough to emulate really old games... say snes/nes genesis maybe ps1/n64. But i really doubt anyone would want to do that on this thing... an Eee seems more useful
redmonke255
It says it runs Doom 3 with ease.

But how do you get the disk on there? I mean, you can make an image, but it just doesn't look practical.
Stobbo
QUOTE (redmonke255 @ Oct 10 2008, 11:03 PM) *
It says it runs Doom 3 with ease.

But how do you get the disk on there? I mean, you can make an image, but it just doesn't look practical.


The eeePC, MSI Wind and other ultra portables don't have disk drivers too, so it is pretty common.
redmonke255
Full specs from the wiki.

Spoiler: Click to Toggle the Spoiler.
Full Specs

These are constantly changing. Hopefully, this page will be updated with them. When adding information please remember to correctly reference the new information to a reliable source.

* General
o The name: Pandora [1]
o Dimensions: 140 x 83 x 27 mm (slightly larger than a DS Lite: vs 133 mm × 73.9 mm × 21.5 mm)
o Price: 199 GBP(incl. VAT) (approx. $330 USD, 212 € (excl. VAT)
o Release date: Pre-orders for the first batch of 4000 Pandoras sold out in six days. Units from this batch are expected to ship in November 2008. Orders for the next batch will be taken in December 2008 for a March 2009 delivery.
o Case will be a bit smaller the GP2X, and will be a mix of metal and plastic. [2]

* Core Hardware:
o Texas Instrument's OMAP3530 System-on-chip. [3] [4] Specifications can be found at this link: [5]
o PowerVR SGX GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, several million polygons per second). OpenGL ES demonstrated: [6]
o 128MB of DDR SDRAM.
o Real Time Clock (RTC) built in, to keep track of time. [7]
o 256MB of internal flash memory.
o Will be "unbrickable".

* Display: 800x480 widescreen (5:3), 4.3 inches, touchscreen LCD.[8]
o Brightness:300 cd/m2, Contrast ratio:450:1, Response time:tr+tf=30ms[9]
o Dimensions: 93.6 x 56.2 mm (4.3 inches, 5:3 aspect ratio).
o TV-out included in hardware, A/V-OUT Port (similar in appearance to a large USB OTG port) outputs S-Video and Composite and inputs 3,5mm Headphone/Microphone cables..
+ Separate TV-out signals, picture-in-picture capabilities. [10]
o Powerful 2D and 3D hardware acceleration, see above. [11]

* Input:
o Buttons, keyboard, microphone, and touchscreen. [12]
o Directional pad will be a D-pad. [13]
o Two real analog nubs, with rubber grip, but no click function. A video of the analog nub to be used in Pandora's construction. Update: a custom designed plastic nub is now being used and will remain in the previously planned location.
o QWERTY keyboard cellphone like thumb typeable. [14]
o Built-In Microphone [15]

* Connectivity:
o 802.11g (Wi-fi) included. USB host included. USB-on-the-go (one-port host and client) included. [16]
o Integrated Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (3Mbps)[17]
o The USB will be fully powered (500 milliamps). You'll be able to use anything that has drivers. [18]
o RS-232 will be included, but a level converter will be needed for the UART. [19]
o Twin SDHC slots.

* Software:
o Open2X-type Linux firmware. [20]
o One-click install system - Debian ARMEL packages probably compatible with minor work.
o Potential Emulation: Nearly any game console which predates the Playstation for which an open-source emulator exists. Nearly any 8 or 16 bit computer system for which an open-source emulator exists.
+ Atari 2600, 7800, 5200, and Lynx
+ Nintendo NES, SNES, Gameboy, GBA and NDS (with combination of inbuilt touchscreen and external TV)
+ Sega Master System and Genesis
+ NEC PCEngine (TurboGrafx-16)
+ SNK NeoGeo, NeoGeo Pocket, and Pocket Color
+ Sony Playstation [21]
+ Atari 400, 800, and ST
+ Amiga
+ PC (DOSBox)
+ Apple II
o Possible Software:
+ Will be capable of running X11 with a window manager and desktop environment, and probably will by default.
+ There should be the ability to run normal programs you can run on Modern Linux builds as well, provided it does not exceed 128MB of RAM (excluding any virtual memory for performance reasons) and is ported. This includes a full build of Firefox! Firefox 3.0 uses much less memory and resources, and should run fine on the Pandora.
+ Macromedia Flash is possible on the Pandora with web browsers with some work. Maybe not full Flash support though, but http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ can be ported to the Pandora and run up to FlashV7 guaranteed, play Youtube videos (mplayer and VLC can play FLV files just fine, play other movie files from Firefox, and VLC can stream FLV easily) and can work with Firefox or as a standalone program.
+ Advanced multimedia support, including streaming: mplayer, VLC, xine and any other program that is open source is possible. For a general idea of file support for VLC see http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html and for xine see http://xinehq.de/index.php/features

* Power:
o Lithium-polymer battery, ~4000mAH.
o Up to 10 hours battery life under reasonable load 8.5 hours under max cpu load. Up to 100 hours playing MP3s. [22]
o Can charge through AC adapter or USB. [23]
o Advanced power management capabilities: only need to set a max clockspeed, when the CPU is not doing anything it automatically HALTs and does nothing to save a lot of power.[24]
o Will be able to suspend to RAM or suspend to disk for longer battery life and faster start up.


[Close]


And here's the emulators
Click.
Acid
practically just a toy/gadget with no real practical purpose. I was right about the emulator thing wink.gif thought that'd be a big point for it.

Falcon
I have heard some great things about it plus it is priced very well.
If you look at the top panel though, you will see that it looks VERY much like the Nintendo DS, but before a few weeks ago, I had never even heard of this company.
I will look into it more tonight though, it looks very interesting slanty.gif
Green~
Infinity
I don't see much purpose in it, to be honest.
If it's just for web surfing, that can be substituted in with an iTouch, iPhone, or Dell Inspirion Mini (which has better specs).
If it's just for gaming, get a PSP or DS which plays much better games, and the system is at a lower price.
Youhei
Hey I posted this few months ago!
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