Pandora's Design

Good or Bad?

  • Love it

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • It's ok

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Meh.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I dislike it

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I hate it

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1

those projected keyboards are shit. How are you going to write an email or document or code on the train with that? No way. I like the mockup for the ds2 but without the lower screen. Put a decent keyboard there and I am buying! Just looks slick but honestly, I don't care if it looks as slick as that mockup... I want the pandora because it's a mobile hackstation. I don't need another psp clone or shit like that.
 
Mr B said:
pupnik said:
What you're not 'getting' is that the above pasted keyboard design has a major flaw.

The trapezoidal shape of the pandora keyboard allows for your thumbs to have some resting surface just below the controllers. extending the keyboard to the edges on the top row means your thumbs will be hitting or wearing-out those edge keys, and your grip on the unit will be worse.
With both the original, and this custom keys, your going to have people resting a part of there palms on the keys, yes. This is as bad on both layouts. More keys on this one, but also more keys in total. Just as bad, with an advantage over the other design makes it a weak, but winning concept. However the important factor, is that the analog sticks, and the d-pad/buttons have been slightly moved to provide reach in a better, and more comfortable way.
B!
The slight vertical offset of the analog controllers would be helpful (I was the first to suggest it). but there may not be room under the hood for that. Also, having more keys is a good thing - obviously - until you begin to consider the size of the unit and the ergonomics of the hand -- which you have not.

This "people will rest a part of their palms on the keyboard" claim of yours is ludicrous. Your palms are on the SIDE of the device. Look at the youtube videos of the mockup if you can't visualize this for yourself.

The trapezoid keyboard gives your thumb a couple of centimeters of unobstructed case surface on the edge that it NEEDS to hold the device stably, esp when holding with one hand and tapping screen with stylus.

(p.s. To the rest of you: replying to posts and including the picture is lame. Edit the pic out of the quoted text.)
 
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Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I feel having the space bar shoved over to the right is very awkward and could result in a lot of typinglikethis by accident.
 
wow, such negative comments found here! I got the gp2x, and was pleased to find an enclosed info sheet on openpandora. And then flowed onto here to read a bit on it.

You know- the more people nit-pick at something, it will never be finished. Devices come and go, the ones that stay are made from improvements of existing tech.

The DS is just a remake of the old game and watch handhelds, the PSP is a mix between a gameboy advance and a playstation and media player... it takes bits from each one, but not all of them quite fit together.
Don't get me wrong here, the psp is pretty good, but for things like web-browsing, or just being portable for being on-the-go its not so great because of the battery and the big scratch-prone screen.

The DS is perfect as a handheld, battery is long, clamshell design is great as you can use it in a variety of ways.

If Nintendo were to move on, they would take what they had with the DS and improve it. And as such they came out with the DS lite. The PSP just became lighter and a bit slimmer with tv-out and the speakers moved from the bottom to the top centre (and the buttons are nicer to press).

I found that the GP2X's Dpad is a bit harsh on the edges, so rolling your thumb around it in games like ThunderForce IV and Streets of Rage can be a bit annoying as its not as fluid as other Dpads. You just can't beat Nintendo's Dpad.


Analog sliders etc have been useless on the PSP, so having analog on the Pandora would also be silly, i mean, I always end up resorting to the DPad anyways, and I doubt that many people will use analog for emulators.. At least have one analog and one rollerball... not two analogs... If the pandora can encorporate a touch-screen like the gp2x then FPS games would be a treat on a touch-screen.
Besides, analog is about precision - and if you have analog on a small screen, you end up losing alot of that precision. You just can't beat a bit of "point and shoot" and I reckon that a touch-screen would be better than analogs cluttering up the design.

When you use two analogs, you have little finger-space left for other actions except move and strafe. Jump with left trigger, shoot with right... what about pick up, open, rifle-butt...? Touch-screen is much better imo. A nice little roller-ball would be cool, if it had a push in to reveal, push in to hide function, the outside of the rollerball could form as some sort of circular dPad...


The clamshell design is perfect for the pandora, nothing worse than the PSP being so big and shiny that you can't just close it and slip it into your bad, you HAVE to have a pouch of some sort..



Overall, the design is pretty hot. But that keyboard...


If I had the job of designing the Pandora, I would have these features -

Clamshell design

top (lid) has the screen

Bottom lid has the speakers

a nice d Pad like the one on the fat DS.

the analog sticks can be removed by a push and twist technique, and you can replace them with a rollerball device or have one rollerball, one analog... etc. Customise the controls a bit.

The bottom has a touch-panel which you can slide a custom card underneath which you can print off on some photopaper. For example, for a CaSTaway emulator, you can print out a keyboard in the style of an atari keyboard.
I think this would be good, much better than a regular keyboard. You won't have to worry about the membranes in the buttons wearing out, or the letters fading away. And as it is a touch-panel, it can have more than one use.

If you are playing an FPS game, you can drag a stylus over it and use it to aim. If you want to use it as a keyboard you can flip a switch to turn the touch-panel into "grid mode" where you can't drag smoothly over it like a pointer, in grid mode you use it to type letters like a keyboard and grid mode will make it easier to enter text. and to put it back on pointermode, simply slide the switch.


Something like this will be much better than a keyboard. Everything else is great. A keyboard only has a few uses, and a touch-panel would be ideal. Especially on a portable device. People will come up with some great apps for the gp2x touch-screen, so without a touch-panel the pandora will be missing out on a LOAD of apps. Lets face it, DS emulation is a way off yet, and with R4 cards being so great - its pointless to emulate a DS at the moment.


For me, a touch panel on the bottom would be perfect. Kinda like a touch-panel on a laptop. But with a switch on the side of it so you can change how it works, slide mode lets you be precise with a pointer, grid mode lets you use it like a keyboard, and you can slide in custom grid-cards underneath.

Plus - a touch-panel is better than a tiny keyboard because with a clamshell design - you end up having the keys marking the screen over time when its closed.
And not only that - but if you had the touch-screen (instead of a touch-panel) on a large screen like on the pandora, you will more than likely scratch it. So a touch panel is better all-round, imo. :)


Well, thats my idea anyways. I think that a keyboard that small will not really be useful that much, so having it be both a keyboard and a touch-panel will give it more uses. Plus, make it look a little nicer :)
But hey, lets hope it all works out for the best!! Im sure its going to be good.
 
It's tough to type when you can't feel the buttons. Touching the screen won't be an issue if the case is done right.
 
nickspoon said:
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I feel having the space bar shoved over to the right is very awkward and could result in a lot of typinglikethis by accident.
The side-space thing is all the rage these days:

verizon-env.jpg


Having used a cell phone for a while that had a similar keyboard layout, I can say that you do adapt quickly. It will not be an issue for most people.
 
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3Designer said:
I think something like this would be more user-friendly, better looking and more successful outside the gp2x niche market:

http://homepromotion.nl/Portable.html



I seem to remember you mentioning earlier that Pandora needs to look slicker and more modern. The design you have there, while not a bad one, looks decidedly eighties and the keyboard seems like it would be flimsy and difficult to work with.

I feel relatively confident that the Pandora will look rather good when we finally see it finished, though time will tell whether the touch-screen being up there will actually be an issue. I don't have that much experience with touch-screen devices, but I would think I'd be supporting the back of the screen in any case, which is just a tiny move of the hand away from the keyboard, and maybe not even the entire hand. If you're carrying the thing in one hand, the finger that would normally hold the shoulder button could easily reach up and support the back.
 
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Magnulus said:
3Designer said:
I think something like this would be more user-friendly, better looking and more successful outside the gp2x niche market:

http://homepromotion.nl/Portable.html



I seem to remember you mentioning earlier that Pandora needs to look slicker and more modern. The design you have there, while not a bad one, looks decidedly eighties and the keyboard seems like it would be flimsy and difficult to work with.

I feel relatively confident that the Pandora will look rather good when we finally see it finished, though time will tell whether the touch-screen being up there will actually be an issue. I don't have that much experience with touch-screen devices, but I would think I'd be supporting the back of the screen in any case, which is just a tiny move of the hand away from the keyboard, and maybe not even the entire hand. If you're carrying the thing in one hand, the finger that would normally hold the shoulder button could easily reach up and support the back.


I know that my render doesn't look great, but it is merely a suggestion for a style in which I think the Pandora would be more user-friendly (mostly considering the touchscreen) and would be more credible and attractive for consumers outside the gp2x niche market. Perhaps a solution would be a screen similar to the first XGP design. Though it seems like it might be a bit expensive to me...
 
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3Designer said:
I know that my render doesn't look great, but it is merely a suggestion for a style in which I think the Pandora would be more user-friendly (mostly considering the touchscreen) and would be more credible and attractive for consumers outside the gp2x niche market. Perhaps a solution would be a screen similar to the first XGP design. Though it seems like it might be a bit expensive to me...
Well, you called it better looking and said it would probably be more successful than the Pandora's current design, so I kind of just assumed that you thought your design was pretty good. Personally, I just find the Pandora's design to be more simple and to the point without too much in the way of fanciful design choices like the spikes and stuff on your machine, and as a consumer, that appeals more to me. Your design would probably work great for a different machine in a different time. I would have loved it back in the eighties, as I said.

However, the Pandora will be wanting the attention of people who find the iPod, DS Lite and... other thingies with as clean design as possible. All the Pandora needs is some pretty-looking branding on the cover, and it'll be all set to emerge looking all kinds of fit. And simple. It could maybe have benefited from a single signature line or something across the back, kind of like the Coca Cola wave, but just a logo would be fine by me.

I can see what you mean about the keyboard, though. There is a chance that the general populace would have preferred a machine with a slide-out keyboard or something like that. Personally, I think it's worth a shot. We'll see when the Pandora II comes if people have been complaining about the lap-top styling of it. Personally, I enjoy it.
 
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Just a quick question. I keep seeing posts every now and again saying that a modification to the design is in the works but I can't find any posts to say that the design has been changed.

Is the design we see now the final design or is that still being developed? And also what things are being changed? (I think the keyboard needs a huge overhaul, aesthetically and ergonomically)
 
I don't fully agree with the design but the machine seems interesting overall. But I think ergonomics of the design is a lot more important than the aesthetic part and this seems something isn't even mentioned about the actual design.

Are ergonomics being taken into consideration in a unprofessional way? I mean contracting an ergonomics expert, so he can modify the design and being comfortable to use for people.

Other thing is that some people say this device seems to big and over complex design. I'm scared of being a really good hardware but failing in the design area, that's what made other very good devices to fail in the market.

About the material of the box, I would like carbon fiber. I don't know if it's expensive or not, but it's lightweight and quite resistant. It seems like is starting to replace steel and other more heavy materials.
 
http://www.dxdec.com/wod/ZodiacDS.jpg

Something along the lines of that would do me, with the bottom screen being a keyboard.

Net result is:

1) Raised game controls on the outer edge of the device for gaming.
2) Thumb board in the middle of the device that can also be used with fingers by sitting it on a desk.
3) Slide and flip screen that can be closed to protect it from damage or opened, flipped, and closed to hide the keyboard and make the device appear to be a pure gaming machine.

Obviously my design is far from perfect and is based on the old Tapwave Zodiac aesthetic. This does want to make me break out firefox and start concepting again though!
 
It's a bit square and clunky but there's an awful lot of thought behind how it's been organised, so it's easy to comment on what we'd like, but I reckon the current design will at least work well, and ticks the boxes.

Would prefer all the buttons, pads etc to be as similarly coloured as possible to the shell, so it's all nice and uniform, nothing outlined or made a contrasting colour to stand out, kind of like the PSP. (apart form the Dpad!)

I'd like to see the LEDs on the top of the hinge so they are visible when the machine is closed.

The keyboard should be done very carefully, it looks like you might press keys with parts of your hands when using the gamepads. Also the lettering on the keyboard should be smaller and subtle.

Make sure nothing contacts the screen when it is shut.

Why are all the ports off-centre on the front? Probably down to the circuitry inside, but the wonkiness of that is sure to annoy me!

A great prototype though, very promising...

®
 
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