I've been playing with this ODROID for a few days now. It is an interesting device. It uses Android well and everything is fairly stable. WiFi works but BT does not. Selecting to turn on BT does nothing so they don't have a driver for it yet. The screen is nice and bright, has a decent contrast ratio and response time. It looks just like the Pandora LCD only at a lower resolution. It has one speaker which is plenty loud for its application. Headphone audio is pretty decent but not quite as good as other devices using the Wolfson Micro DAC. To me, this is where the good stuff ends.
The volume buttons (shoulder buttons) are capacitive pads under the surface and so touching the case over them is what activates them. There are blue LEDs inside the translucent case that turn on to let you know when they are activated. It is neat but you are turning the volume up and down all of the time, especially when going into portrait mode. This gets freaking annoying all of the time as the speaker lets out a loud beep corresponding to the volume level as you bump it up and down constantly. You can lock them out by pressing and holding until the system recognizes the lockout but then you have to repeat this process when you want to use them again. Volume control is also inconsistent between apps like the Wiz. In an app like the SNES emu that uses the shoulder buttons, you have no control over the volume anymore. You have to exit the app, change the volume and then come back in. The app stays running unless you explicitly close it so you won't lose your place in the game. It's just inconvenient.
The ABXY buttons are mapped to the keyboard ABXY buttons so most Android apps (other than emus) won't use them. This means that only the buttons on the left side of the device work which is awkward. The buttons themselves are a bit stiffer than I would like. They are at a level that we previously rejected with the Pandora keymat because it was a little tiring after a while. The buttons are separated like the PSP but they have a smaller diameter than the PSP and it doesn't work as well because your thumb wants to slip off and over them. I don't really like the PSP buttons but they work because they are so large and no matter where your thumb is, you will still make contact. The ODROID buttons are completely flat and press up and down as well as sideways and down. I can do Ryu's fireball move in Street Fighter II so they are functional.
The touchscreen response is very frustrating but that is just software. It is hard to scroll because it selects what is under your finger too quickly. It took me about 15 tries to set my time zone because of how far down the list I had to go.
It is a capacitive touch screen but has no multi-touch capability as of yet.
The HDMI port is the mini type and even though the connector is physically different than the EXT/charging port, the charging cable will fit into either one!!! I made that mistake once and thought my device was screwed because I couldn't charge and the UART breakout board didn't work anymore. Thankfully the 5V charging input pin is reserved and unconnected on the HDMI port so the charging voltage went no where and everything was fine. The labels for the ports are just slightly depressed letters molded into the case so you have to twist it in the light to read them and I goofed.
My final complaint is that the battery seems to drain with the device completely powered off. I turned it off one night at about 70% remaining and the next day the battery was at 17%. The second night it was about the same level and the next day the indicator was in the yellow warning area. I turned it off at 90% last night and this afternoon it is now at 83% so I'm not really sure what happened. I may have to remove the battery when I'm not going to use the device for an extended amount of time. It seemed to drain less if the battery was closer to full before shutting off. I can see some possible speculation as to why that is based on the schematic, but nothing I will mention at this time.
The schematics were included with the device, but there is a nice big warranty sticker under the battery that gets destroyed when you disassemble the unit.
So overall, it's a neat little light weight device but playing Android games is quite boring so I would still recommend a Wiz, Dingoo or Pandora over this (if gaming is your main interest). Only Pandora and the ODROID have Wifi and BT which is important to some people like myself. The ODROID is open hardware which none of the other devices are (Pandora will be a somewhat close second though) and it runs Linux so in the future any software could be ported to it. I think the community at GP32X is what makes that sort of thing happen and I don't know if there is enough to this device to jump ship to yet another platform.
I don't have a Dingoo but I can say that I like the Wiz controls better (except for the dpad's lack of pivot) and I definitely like the Pandora's controls more than all of these.
Of course, I am biased towards Pandora so be aware of that.
