Design discussion


Display: Keep resistive touch, add brightness slider: http://www.recycledg..._41993_zoom.jpg


See that slider on the right? Great! I hate software solutions for simple problems.

Software control for display brightness is simpler and cheaper than your slider. These days with the abundance of functionality in an SoC a lot of things are better done in software. In some cases even a hardware slider would have less of a design impact if interfaced with software rather than acting as a direct control..


To add to that, more physical controls take up valuable device space. And sliders can be accidentally moved.. would be a pain in the ass to try to remember what slider position you wanted for something like brightness.
 
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Since we have an existing design, and since that design is so much like the Nintendo DS Lite (or DSi, or 3DS), I propose that the new design shoot for the thickness of the DS Lite, 22 mm.


Unless we're going radical redesign, in which case all bets are off.
 
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I have a feeling that the clamshell design is here to stay :unsure: :) , In which case, I think the most important questions are:

  • The P1 had one custom (electronic) accessory (TV-out cables) - these have been essentially unobtainable - Will this situation be improved for the P2? If so , something like socketable analogue controls might be possible.
  • Is the any room for further controls in terms of price/manufacturing complexity? - If so, how much?
 
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Display: Keep resistive touch, add brightness slider: http://www.recycledg..._41993_zoom.jpg


See that slider on the right? Great! I hate software solutions for simple problems.

Software control for display brightness is simpler and cheaper than your slider. These days with the abundance of functionality in an SoC a lot of things are better done in software. In some cases even a hardware slider would have less of a design impact if interfaced with software rather than acting as a direct control..


To add to that, more physical controls take up valuable device space. And sliders can be accidentally moved.. would be a pain in the ass to try to remember what slider position you wanted for something like brightness.
It would already help, if the Pandora brightness hotkeys would activate a brightness indication bar on the screen. At the Moment, you have to set the brightness on pure guess but I personaly prefer exact values so I have to go the longer way into the Brightness menu (I usualy use brightness value of 17, pretty enough for me and it really saves battery time. :) )


Small comfortable software solutions like this can already improve our existing Pandora. There is still alot of optimizing potential in.
 
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^ Wasn't there a thread for software enhancements like that?
 
^ Wasn't there a thread for software enhancements like that?
That'd be this one, if I'm not mistaken. :)
That's it :)


---


Here's a thought:


As one reason that resistive touchscreens are not used in smartphones is that there are largely unsuitable for pinch-zoom, swiping etc, why not put a capacitive touchpad (PSVita-style) on the bottom of a P2, with a resistive touchscreen in the lid.


Then people could install Android (or as a factory-install) and do all that nice gesture-based stuff with their middle fingers - this would be more comfortable than constant touchscreen use for apps that assume a touchscreen-centric device, and having a touchpad on a mini-pc wouldn't do any harm either...


Depending on use, you might even learn to select buttons and such without being able to see your finger - ?
 
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on the subject of resistive vs capacitative touchscreens, i honestly cannot see a clamshell design like the pandora functioning comfortably enough to make it a worthwhile switch over resistive. to sit and hold the screen in two hands by the lid would put more weight on the hinge than i would be comfortable with. i could see it working on a slider style pandora or one with a rotating hinge clamshell but unless that changes its got to be resistive all the way.


one of the important things i think we have seen with the pandora during its production is just how lucky the team were to have a device that was not so over designed that they couldn't carry out repairs relatively simply and pull in assembly somewhere they could make units themselves. being able to fix LCD damages units and swap parts in and out has been much better and reduced the amount of parts that would have to be scrapped in the end, to the benefit of the project as a whole, so with that in mind we have to consider whether a more aesthetically sophisticated and complicated design would be worth having to rely on other companies to outsource assembly to or in the case of faults, accept a bit of a loss on.


in terms of improvements for me, i would like to be able to hold the pandora and just know it was as rugged and strong as say the DS lite. i have heard that more recent cases are actually a bit better these days bit my case has a few cracks and two of the three tabs on my battery cover have snapped off, and i've probably only taken it off three or four times! i think there has been enough discussion about the hinge over the years that though i have little problem with it as it is, it would not hurt to have something better and more adjustable. it would also be nice perhaps to see a battery revision that might take advantage of the last 4 or so years of battery technological improvement. surely something of the same size could provide better life right now (not that i am disappointed, just thinking we could make an already good thing better). once we have TV-Out cables going, i really do not see any benefit for changing the ext slot to being HDMI, since there are so many other AV benefits to the proposed design. finally in terms of more external form factor, if there is any way to improve the nubs based on the experiences of all the current users, it should be looked in to. it might be an improved dead zone, or a more snapped to central point but hey, its good not to think things cannot be improved.


under the hood we obviously want to preserve compatibility with all the current work but i think there are weak links. the wifi unit has been pretty problematic so it would be nice if we could find something that would cause fewer headaches and provide better performance. i don't know the ins and outs of the GPU situation but if its possible it would be really good to have one that could make use of GL and GLES without having to always find workarounds for everything, but still be compatible to not have to rework everything already done. i don't actually know if there are better forthcoming options but that definitely seems to have held back some ports or some development. obviously any incremental changes in better spec ARM chips with NAND and RAM size should be made, provided it is also still compatible.


in terms of extra features, i don't think there is much universally useful to people that is a desperate must. i mean sure an accelerometer is nice and all but what will it be used for? a couple of games maybe? i just don't see it being a significant enough feature and i cant really fathom any situation beyond games that i would use it for. GPS could feasibly be more useful perhaps, could it make the pandora a car GPS device? i guess my biggest question is how good would it be crammed into the pandora and how expensive would it be? i have never gotten the impression it worked all that well on any phone, but happy to be proved wrong there. 3G is probably the most obvious add-on but the question is how. is there room for it in the hardware, is it something that would bring a whole lot of licencing and legal difficulties with it? if we were able to make the pandora a phone i would definitely think it was a great idea but if that is unlikely then people will have a phone anyway, they will likely be able to tether the pandora to it, and though i think it might be nice sometimes to be able to go online absolutely anywhere, there isnt much that i personally would want to be able to do that i couldn't do on a phone. i mean sure if people want to sit on IRC all day on their pandora's or be able to mess around with facebook or on forums or check train times or whatever else then cool, its useful but if you can do those things on a phone and the pandora cannot replace a phone, then i think its going to be niche enough that people can just tether or use a dongle.


anyway, that's my 2 cents, at least with regard to the pandora in this form factor. now if you said you wanted to make a gaming phone.... then no keyboard, 3G, capacitative, possibly a slider, etc etc, but then i don't think its going to be the device people go for when there are other such successful and popular phones out there and i just don't know if it would be worth it. maybe something modular would be good where you can use icontrolpad type attachments to a central capacitative slate unit would be good. make it a phone, make it open source (if possible with a phone) and make all the add-ons optional extras and maybe you would have something unique enough!


EDIT - dang that was longer than i realised!
 
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It would already help, if the Pandora brightness hotkeys would activate a brightness indication bar on the screen
Sounds like something I should add to the overlay menu I was working on.
Nice. :)

^ Wasn't there a thread for software enhancements like that?
That'd be this one, if I'm not mistaken. :)
Also nice. :)


I write this suggestion in, before I forget it. ^^
 
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on the subject of resistive vs capacitative touchscreens, i honestly cannot see a clamshell design like the pandora functioning comfortably enough to make it a worthwhile switch over resistive. to sit and hold the screen in two hands by the lid would put more weight on the hinge than i would be comfortable with. i could see it working on a slider style pandora or one with a rotating hinge clamshell but unless that changes its got to be resistive all the way.

Agreed :)


Thats why I was thinking a capacitive touchpad on the underside of the base could work out...
 
The most logical solution for tv out would be mini-display port or just display port - no license costs and it can output to hdmi without a problem, also scales to 1080p fine.


A quadcore arm chip will probably be used which will also bring a better gpu


1 gb of ram is becoming standard


Forget the Nand and have a micro-sd card under the battery - 1gb sd cards costs pretty much nothing these days


I would also love it if the screen could flip around to make it a pda/drawing tablet
 
ok, if dome switches are what I think they are (clicky), I don't think we should have them, I personally wouldn't care about the thickness if it means having the same keyboard.


also, I think we shouldn't get rid of the internal NAND, it gives users something to fall back on if they screw something up, but I do like the idea of an internal micro sd card.


I don't think we should change the case much, it seems perfect the way it is.


I'm not sure how much extra cost this would add, but what if we had some internal USB pads on the inside?


that way people could add small thins to their pandora without having to tie up the outside port.
 
How about having a very small NAND for the bare OS (maybe up to command-line stuff for emergencies), an internal SDXC slot for stuff you always use with your 'dora and an external one for other stuff...
 
I'm not sure how much extra cost this would add, but what if we had some internal USB pads on the inside?


that way people could add small thins to their pandora without having to tie up the outside port.
The cost isn't the pads, it'd be the hub chip. If there was room for it in the P1, I'm sure it would have been included because that would have made it fully 2.0/1.1 compatible as well, but it just wouldn't fit. The P2 might be in a similar situation, depends on what kind of cuts can be made in other places and what kind of magic MWeston can pull off.
 
I'm not sure how much extra cost this would add, but what if we had some internal USB pads on the inside?


that way people could add small thins to their pandora without having to tie up the outside port.
The cost isn't the pads, it'd be the hub chip. If there was room for it in the P1, I'm sure it would have been included because that would have made it fully 2.0/1.1 compatible as well, but it just wouldn't fit. The P2 might be in a similar situation, depends on what kind of cuts can be made in other places and what kind of magic MWeston can pull off.
Remove the mini-usb and just go straight for usb 1.1/2.0/3.0


Or remove the dedicated charging port and adopt the micro-usb charging standard of the mobile phones (a lot of micro-usb chargers that come with phone supply 1A@5v)
 
How about having a very small NAND for the bare OS (maybe up to command-line stuff for emergencies), an internal SDXC slot for stuff you always use with your 'dora and an external one for other stuff...

Don't see the point of having the NAND at all.
 
Remove the mini-usb and just go straight for usb 1.1/2.0/3.0


Or remove the dedicated charging port and adopt the micro-usb charging standard of the mobile phones (a lot of micro-usb chargers that come with phone supply 1A@5v)
These were both virtually free features: the AC and USB charging are on the same chip, with the mini-USB being part of the SoC anyway. You wouldn't actually gain anything by removing them. Pretty much everything you can see won't gain a lot of space by removing it, from my understanding. Even the bluetooth/wifi are a combo package, so getting rid of one won't give a benefit unless the other is removed as well.


Best way to free up space would be to combine features: one MCU for both nubs instead of one for each; a single chip that does charging and fuel gauge; these sorts of things.
 
Remove the mini-usb and just go straight for usb 1.1/2.0/3.0


Or remove the dedicated charging port and adopt the micro-usb charging standard of the mobile phones (a lot of micro-usb chargers that come with phone supply 1A@5v)
These were both virtually free features: the AC and USB charging are on the same chip, with the mini-USB being part of the SoC anyway. You wouldn't actually gain anything by removing them. Pretty much everything you can see won't gain a lot of space by removing it, from my understanding. Even the bluetooth/wifi are a combo package, so getting rid of one won't give a benefit unless the other is removed as well.


Best way to free up space would be to combine features: one MCU for both nubs instead of one for each; a single chip that does charging and fuel gauge; these sorts of things.
The ports themselves take up space, granted they are a small foot print, but every bit counts
 
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