Android Gaming Handheld: Odroid

[MWeston]

Nah, you don't want to buy this thing.....I hear it gives you AIDS. Hehe.

 

[migo]

What's so bad about the controls? I've never played a WonderSwan, but I haven't heard any complaints about the controls, so I'd imagine these would turn out just fine.

Also - what's wrong with 1SD card slot? 0 is kind of a pain, but 1 is plenty, unless one slot would be SDIO for peripherals, but that was more relevant for the Zodiac when the potential of a WiFi add on was there.

 

[lulzfish]

Well, it is kinda nice to have 2 SD slots, it lets you copy SD cards without buffering to RAM / NAND and swapping things in and out like crazy.
Though since this is more of a game system than a PC, 1 is probably fine.

 

[migo]

I'd just think you'd have it plugged into a PC anyway, and the SD card slot would essentially be so you can chose the size of your internal storage, and wouldn't really be swapping anything in or out very much.

 

[skeezix]

1) More chocie in gadgets is _Good_; no need for enmity between groups
2) Android .. at least I suppose it'll have native compilation, since it'll be homebrewable? (ie: Android phones are pretty hostile towards native, and native is where we all live
3) I dunon, meh Android right now :/
4) Ugly duckling And I want the keyboard on the panda
5) Still, pretty good specs

I'd say its another worthy entrant into the ecosystem; bring all the gadgets. Let us, the gp32x geeks, be gadget lovers, not haters-of-everything-else

jeff

 

[craigix]

I'm quite glad they didn't have much attention to detail on this thing, as it might have got us worried. It does look like those controls were just bolted on based on the cheap-pmp-controls blueprint.

No doubt I'll get some in stock at gbax though... to go with the other PMPs.

Also don't assume it's faster/better/stronger until we do some benchmarking.

 

[Exophase]

The hardware 3D accelerateor conected to surface flinger shows 7.8Mega-Vertices and 167 Mega-pixel fill-rate per second performance. It is 30% much enhanced than S3C6410.

This might not be SGX535. If you look at the product paper for S3C6410 you'll see this:

Architecture
•Floating-point pipeline & Object-order rendering
•4-Way SIMD vertex shader+ pixel shader
•ShaderModel 3.0: World 1st implementation
•128-bit (32-bit x 4) FP x 1 Vertex Shader128-bit (32-bit x 4) FP x 1 Pixel Shaders-8-stage pipeline-512 Instruction Slots (configurable)
•Memory BW Optimization

That's not a PowerVR design. S5PC100 could be using something else. There's no proof that the exact same SoC is in iPhone, that's just popular belief based on specs. cpulist says SGX530@100MHz, but I still don't seen any hard evidence.

Either way, it's still another Cortex-A8 design with bad controls, this time another 64KB L1 cache one, sad I have little doubt that the CPU can beat Pandora's.

 

[christo930]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/01/android-based-odroid-handheld-gaming-concept-debuts-hurts-our-e/

My reaction is the same as many: "Wonderswan called, they want their control scheme back."

I would see that more as a competitor to the PSP and NDS than against the Pandora. I really don't think the Pandora is going to be a mass market thing especially given it's lack of serious security and all of the emulators. Since the Pandora is going to have rather small (relatively) production runs, I think they are going to sell all the Pandoras they can make. I don't know why so many people are down on the controller setup, I think it's pretty cool and makes the device more versatile. They don't list an availability date at the site linked (at least none that I saw).

Chris

 

[(naw)mcx]

I'm quite glad they didn't have much attention to detail on this thing, as it might have got us worried. It does look like those controls were just bolted on based on the cheap-pmp-controls blueprint.

No doubt I'll get some in stock at gbax though... to go with the other PMPs.

Also don't assume it's faster/better/stronger until we do some benchmarking.

CONFIRMED: 600MHz 256MB RAM>883MHz 512MB RAM

CONFIRMED: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, MOST LIKELY, IGNORE ME.

 

[Exophase]

I would see that more as a competitor to the PSP and NDS than against the Pandora. I really don't think the Pandora is going to be a mass market thing especially given it's lack of serious security and all of the emulators. Since the Pandora is going to have rather small (relatively) production runs, I think they are going to sell all the Pandoras they can make. I don't know why so many people are down on the controller setup, I think it's pretty cool and makes the device more versatile. They don't list an availability date at the site linked (at least none that I saw).

Chris

Why would this be a competitor for something by Sony or Nintendo? Do you think it'll have lots of original content for it? It's running Android, that practically screams that it's relying on content that isn't unique. Android isn't "secure" in the sense you put it, and many emulators have already been ported to it. And then you think they'll make lots of these - what large demand do you see for an Android gaming platform? Android is a platform dominated by phones, not gaming devices. This is not a phone, it's a MID with resolution that's not good for internet browsing and with a limited control scheme. By that I mean no multi-touch ala iPhone and buttons that aren't useful for text input. It seems to me that this will have a more limited audience than the Pandora, not a greater one, because it's useful for fewer things. It's also not backed by a big manufacturer and it doesn't have the kind of presale hype that even Pandora does.

The games advertised on their website look like casual Flash or Java games, which is not surprising since Android is a Java platform. They don't even look like especially good Flash or Java games. Korean handheld makers need to get with the picture and realize that this crap doesn't sell (anyone remember "Racecar"?). At least GPH is trying to do native games for Wiz. But even if this company was seriously trying they wouldn't come up with anything even remotely close to Nintendo DS or PSP level. Do you know that DS has like 3500 releases and is showing no signs of slowing down? How can you even use something like this in the same sentence?

People are down on the controls for a few reasons. One, segmented style dpads, especially ones that look like a circle with an X cut out of them (see GP2X) often (not always) do badly because they're often not pivoted. Two, the face buttons and the dpads on the left are clearly the same style, which is bad whether they're both pivoted or both unpivoted. Distinct, separate, circular face buttons with a pivoted d-pad is the way to go. Three, doesn't look like there are shoulder buttons. No, having two d-pads isn't as good, you can't operate two d-pads simultaneously. Shoulders are important to emulating SNES, GBA, PS1, N64, probably other things.

The second d-pad is good for vertical games, yes, and basically nothing else. It's designed for cellphone games, even though it's not a phone. Maybe it's trying to capitalize on iPhone gaming success, I don't know.

 

[danielliu88888]

so, in the end, it's just another cheap ipod touch/iphone clone with better specs and some dpads. and it runs android. and bad battery life.

 

[jlepley]

According to my virus scanning software, hardkernel.com tried to give me a Trojan. I don't know if that was a false alarm or not, but it makes the website look very fishy. Something set off some alarm bells.

 

[musicalwoods]

1) More chocie in gadgets is _Good_; no need for enmity between groups
2) Android .. at least I suppose it'll have native compilation, since it'll be homebrewable? (ie: Android phones are pretty hostile towards native, and native is where we all live
3) I dunon, meh Android right now :/
4) Ugly duckling And I want the keyboard on the panda
5) Still, pretty good specs

I'd say its another worthy entrant into the ecosystem; bring all the gadgets. Let us, the gp32x geeks, be gadget lovers, not haters-of-everything-else

jeff

Actually, Android does nave a native development kit, but it seems like they are trying to downplay it currently.

 

[gibberish]

does it have shoulder buttons?

 

[lulzfish]

doesn't look like there are shoulder buttons.

does it have shoulder buttons?

No.
It does have an accelerometer and touchscreen, though. And a lack of a native English speaker anywhere in their company..

:blink: I just tried to copy some text from their site, BUT IT WAS AN IMAGE.
WTF

"ODROID gives you dynamic challenge of games with high end CPU and game friendly form factor. You can really feel and control any games by touching the sensitive Yeti nipples screen, pressing keypad, and controlling accelerometer"

I had to type that shit out... Damn their poorly designed website.

 

[Atomic Man]

you can't operate two d-pads simultaneously.

This is how I roll:

doesn't look like there are shoulder buttons.

does it have shoulder buttons?

No.

Take a closer look at the volume button placement.

It looks like the D-Pad on the right will kill your thumb though.

 

[Exophase]

Take a closer look at the volume button placement.

They're either shoulder buttons or they aren't, although something in the same general area would at least be better than nothing. But you don't know if they're software controlled yet.

 

[Atomic Man]

They're either shoulder buttons or they aren't, although something in the same general area would at least be better than nothing. But you don't know if they're software controlled yet.

Oh come on, glance over the Hard Kernel website at least once. It even labels them as "L" and "R" in the game mode example. I will agree that the placement is poor though.

 

[migo]

I'm sure I remember reading them say something about using the volume buttons as shoulder buttons.

 

[Enverex]

I'm sure I remember reading them say something about using the volume buttons as shoulder buttons.

... then what do you use as volume buttons? lol. Weird design idea.