A physical Dummy, Power Usage and MIPI

[WizardStan]

Battery technology has come on quite a long way in the past 5 years.

No there hasn't, actually. Lithium polymer is basically at it's peak and has been for a very long time. There's been a little bit of improvement, maybe we can get an extra 10-20% in the same size, but the next step is going to be a paradigm shift, entirely new battery technology, and for all the "this is the next battery" and "charge your battery in 1 second" articles that have been blasted around the internet for years not a single one has actually turned into a viable product. The only way we're going to see better battery life in the foreseeable is with a significantly increased battery size.
edit: to make the point, the thin layer of graphene you mentioned was a university project, it's not like you can call up a battery manufacturer and say "hey, do this thing!" It'd be custom design and most places won't have the ability to do that.

 

[Natsu]

Million happy NDS users don't mind the screws for the battery cover of their devices. I still like the idea to include a matching (sonic-)screwdriver into the Pyra Stylus. So the tool to also dissable the Pyra is already included, that would give a straight 10/10 from iFixit! B)

I don't see that many NDS people even messing with the battery and people who do would most likely prefer easy access.I rather have XStylus Crayon included than some makeshift screwdriver.

very excited. I trust there will be a model without a sim card slot and 3g module? I'd rather have WiFi only and longer battery

If your only concern is battery life, you should be able to disable 3G when you don't need it.

 

[moxie]

I'm ok with using screws to hold the battery in place.

I'm pretty sure most are not.

Why not? That is the obvious solution?

 

[panik]

Are we to take it then that you've completely abandoned the EXT port?

Not that anyone ever really put it to use, but it made me happy knowing that I could have serial, IR, or just a bunch of random buttons and LEDs.

I know there are some people that are seriously going to be miffed about the lack of line level audio out.

What about these hackable features? Will there at least be pads for addition GPIO or serial lines if we don't mind doing some soldering? What about the GPIO behind the LCD?

I suppose they left when the HDMI option came around but I had tons of fun with them GPIOs

Honestly (as ED mentioned) serial over USB is actually much easier, and GPIO over USB is pretty trivial too.

But it's not always about easier, is it?

 

[Natsu]

Why not? That is the obvious solution?

Why would you give up easy access to the battery and possibly the Micro SD card?

 

[WizardStan]

But it's not always about easier, is it?

It definitely isn't. But the GPIOs are just for play, and not something that really defined the Pandora at all.I will say that I am a little upset about the loss of the line level audio, and I know others who will be even more so. The audio quality was something to be proud of. Beyond proud of, it was almost religious.

 

[panik]

True.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

ED, please don't degrade the audio quality on Pyra. It should be same or better. Like WizardStan said, it's like a religion and I don't want to change my religion.

 

[Trip]

.. and for all the "this is the next battery" and "charge your battery in 1 second" articles that have been blasted around the internet for years not a single one has actually turned into a viable product.

You expect technology that has only been invented in the last 5 years to be in consumer products now? Nothing gets turned into a fully viable product in that amount of time. Especially not something that can explode or cause fires.

edit: to make the point, the thin layer of graphene you mentioned was a university project, it's not like you can call up a battery manufacturer and say "hey, do this thing!" It'd be custom design and most places won't have the ability to do that.

I never said that did I?

What you can do is contact the university and see how far along the study is. For all you know they could be looking for a real world test bed right about now and something like the the Pyra would be perfect. Or they could offer some clues to a better alternative.

 

[Kiga]

But it's not always about easier, is it?

It definitely isn't. But the GPIOs are just for play, and not something that really defined the Pandora at all.
I will say that I am a little upset about the loss of the line level audio, and I know others who will be even more so. The audio quality was something to be proud of. Beyond proud of, it was almost religious.

True.

ED, please don't degrade the audio quality on Pyra. It should be same or better. Like WizardStan said, it's like a religion and I don't want to change my religion.

Audio quality very important, it's one of the things  I always think about when I think about Pandora awesomness and next Pyra.

I had not seen line level loss. I was hoping for maybe a better quality, and we will get worse... It's a big issue to me, I hope you will reconsider.

 

[kasp]

Well to me I am not overly concerned about sound quality. What the Pandora has is fantastic but it's not like I use my Pandora as an Ipod or stereo system. The main thing I care about is sleekness and horsepower and I think I am more in line with the general consumers out there.

 

[TrashyMG]

^why not have good sound quality it's achievable.

 

[EvilDragon]

The audio quality doesn't have anything to do with the Line Out...?

The Line Out provides a fixed peak, but that's the only difference between the Line Out and the headphones out.

So instead of using the Line Out, you can easily use the headset port.

No one said anything about degrading the audio quality...

Besides, HDMI also provides audio out, there are converters from HDMI to optical audio. You could even get surround sound out of that.

 

[WizardStan]

You expect technology that has only been invented in the last 5 years to be in consumer products now?

No, I don't, and that's the point: lithium polymer has peaked and really hasn't improved in over 5 years. This contradicts what you said, that battery technology has improved.

I never said that did I?

You didn't use those exact words but you may as well have. You stated that battery tech has improved, that there's something that we could use to get improved performance without increasing the size of the battery, and then used graphene as an example.

What you can do is contact the university and see how far along the study is.

We could do that, but I wouldn't feel comfortable asking ED to be a guinea pig for experimental and unproven battery technology even if he didn't have anything to lose. There's a lot of questions involved in new tech, not the least of which is how well supported it will be, especially when it comes to batteries and how each advancement has come with different was of charging.Alternately we could accept what we've actually got access to and that there just hasn't been any improvement in battery technology worth getting hung up about.

So instead of using the Line Out, you can easily use the headset port.

It's not really that easy. A lot of high quality setups expect line level outputs. Connecting a Pyra to these systems will require an amplifier. Not a major problem but still a feature that is lost. It's understandable that it needed to be removed for other stuff, that doesn't mean the loss shouldn't be lamented.

 

[Kiga]

The audio quality doesn't have anything to do with the Line Out...?

Well, I didn't understand, as I don't know what "line level" is and I read wikipedia too fast. It's not a huge problem to me as I don't use line out.

If there is a way to improve audio quality, it would be so great.

 

[xiongxioi]

Speaking of audio quality, one thing that bugs me about pandora is that, every pandora I have seems to have varying level of background white noise. 

It's particularly noticeable when it is connected to a low impedance earphone. I have no idea if it's just me or what. It's not very noticeable, but annoying none the less. 

 

[_wb_]

So instead of using the Line Out, you can easily use the headset port.

It's not really that easy. A lot of high quality setups expect line level outputs. Connecting a Pyra to these systems will require an amplifier. Not a major problem but still a feature that is lost. It's understandable that it needed to be removed for other stuff, that doesn't mean the loss shouldn't be lamented.

With HDMI we get digital audio out, which is better than any analog signal anyway. So in my opinion, it's an upgrade, not a loss.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I really love these updates /nostalgic feelings for the pandora production process coverage

 

[WizardStan]

With HDMI we get digital audio out, which is better than any analog signal anyway. So in my opinion, it's an upgrade, not a loss.

I've not seen a lot of audio systems with HDMI in, at the least you'd need an adapter to just get the digital audio portion, and then I'm not sure about how many of them even support that in the ways people are using it. Like yes, I'm sure any modern system will have digital audio in somewhere, but for the most part it's just assumed that everything is analogue.Like, the Pandora line out can be plugged directly into those big concert speakers, speaker out doesn't have the same power so it wouldn't work, and they absolutely don't have digital input.

One step away, most basic mixing boards are just a bunch of analogue inputs and outputs and resistive sliders for controlling the signals, no digital input there either. You'll need a more advanced system that can do the conversion somewhere.

It's the resistive vs capacitive argument all over again: they serve different purposes, and even if digital audio may have a lot of technical improvements it isn't the same as line level analogue, it's not strictly better.

 

[levi]

You can convert the digital audio from HDMI to line level quite easily, though I've not spotted any portable boxes with similar Burr-brown technology used in the Pandora (and presumably, Pyra headphone out too).


So it may be easier to wire up the headphone out to line in. I've done that myself in days gone by to e.g play MP3 players through an amp, and not had a problem (although you generally need the volume a bit lower than you would if you were using headphones). Wikipedia suggests impedance mismatches between headphone out and line in wouldn't be significant, on their line level page.