Prometheus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 9,472
So, my Pandora arrived this morning. I just wanted to drop in and give my first impressions of the unit - from the unit itself - before I disappear again to play with it some more. I'm writing this from my Pandora, using Arora, which I'm finding performs better than Fennec right now (Fennec's control setup is a bit too awkward and confusing for my liking, I'm afraid). I'm also listening to the soundtrack from Mega Man 10 in gnome-mplayer, with my Sennheiser PX200s, and it sounds great - no different from my ThinkPad or MacBook, in fact.
I could barely unwrap and open the box fast enough when it arrived. Retrieving the contents was an almost surreal experience - here I was holding a machine that I had thus far only seen in renders and other people's photographs. I popped out the battery to take a look at the serial number, which is (surprisingly) in the ~400 range (it's either 426 or 456 - I can't remember right now, as it was some hours ago and I'm letting it charge right now, so I can't double-check it).
My Pandora feels very solid and sturdy, with no real build issues of which to speak, except for a missing light-pipe on the right-hand side, a one or two millimetre bit of bezel-bowing at the bottom of the screen (which I *didn't even notice at all* until I thought to check for it a few moments ago), and an ever-so-slightly-stiffer-than-the-left-one right shoulder button (it also sits "back" a bit compared to the left one, but this is purely cosmetic, and is unnoticeable during use). However, I have a SNES controller that was like this once, which loosened up with moderate use - I fully expect that the same will be the case here, too. More Star Fox and Mega Man needed here, methinks.
If anyone from the team is reading this, can you please tell me if the lightpipes are a part that's snapped in from the outside or not? If so, can I shoot you an e-mail and get the missing one posted to me? Thanks.
The painted finish reminds me very much of the black version of the Game Boy Advance SP, though a bit less "shiny" than those, and it looks very professional, to me. Being reminded of the GBA SP made me quite nostalgic, which was a good start, I think.
The controls - every single one of them - are fantastic. This machine hasn't been out of my hands since around noon, and my arms, hands, and wrists don't hurt *at all*. That takes some doing - well done on the ergonomics, DaveC. Also, I don't think I've come across such excellent game controls since the SNES' controller (which, as forum regulars may know, is my favourite controller of all time ). The "chunkiness" of the unit also helps - I really must commend the team for not trying to make the Pandora ridiculously thin. I have small hands, and found the Nintendo DS Lite and the Nintendo DSi to be far too thin to comfortably use the shoulder buttons on, for example (only those two - the original DS is exempt from this). No such problems here.
The nubs, well, what can I say that hasn't been said about them aready? They're brilliant, and TrackPoint fans will be glad to know that using them for mousing in Xfce feels fairly close to using a TrackPoint. Both of the ones on my Pandora feel and behave the same, there doesn't seem to be any variation between how they respond.
I really like the keyboard, and adjusted to the layout within a few minutes or less. Your mileage may vary, though - I switch between at least two (sometimes three) different types of keyboard during the day on a daily basis, so I did not find this difficult in the slightest. It's very much designed for thumb-typing, and it works very well for this. I foresee it being very useful for my written projects, as well as for quick notes. All of my keys respond nicely and evenly, and it's a pleasure to type with. Using the game controls as the arrow keys and Home/End/Page-up/Page-down keys is very intuitive, too.
No dead pixels or ghosting are present on my screen, as far as I can see, and the backlight is very easy on my eyes at its highest brightness level. It looks like every game I own was made for it, it really does. So far I've tried out Rockman & Forte, Star Fox, and Mega Man 7 for the SNES, Mega Man 2 for the NES, Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo for the C64, Mega Man for MS-DOS, High Seas Havoc and Pulseman for the Mega Drive, and, in MAME, Rockman: The Power Battle, Rockman 2: The Power Fighters, Strider, and Mappy (yes, yes, I know - there's a lot of Mega Man games in there ). I also watched a bit of a movie which I bought on DVD and ripped to m4v last week, although I found that the mp4 rips that I did a year or two ago with an older version of HandBrake do not work - use the most recent ones, instead. The rip that worked was ffmpeg-encoded MPEG-4 video, with 160kbps AAC audio, and it looked and sounded as clean as a whistle and was very smooth.
The finish on the touch-screen is very interesting - it looks matte, and feels a bit "rough" somehow. It makes quite a change from the usual shiny-looking screens you tend to see on handheld devices, both gaming and non.
The angle that the hinge locks at seems very natural to me, and the hinge on my unit is quite tight - if it's not at its locking position it will move if you jolt the unit, but I'd expect that of anything. I'm quite glad that it doesn't lock in the same spot that the various Nintendo DS models do, as I don't think that that would feel natural here.
The speakers can go very loud - I think they're actually a touch louder than the ones on my original Nintendo DS, which is very nice indeed.
The OS, I think, is incredibly polished for a very first release, and it's incredibly stable, too, in my experience. I've only had one crash of any sort, and that was entirely my own fault for trying to run the CPU at 900MHz - it ran stably for about ten minutes, but then suddenly hung up when I was trying to install the Community Codec Pack. A tip, here: Don't mess with your clock speed before installing important things. I had to re-download the PND to a different SD Card in order to be able to install it at all, after that! I've had one lone WiFi disconnection, and that's been while I was writing this. I'll have to get it reconnected before I hit the "Post" button.
All in all, my first experiences of the Pandora are worlds away from those I had with my GP2X. This is everything I had hoped for from an open handheld, and more - and this is only the first day! I can't wait to see what the future holds.
I think that about wraps up my first impressions, now. I will get my photography-box and camera out later tonight and take some photographs - I'll edit them into this post when they're done.
EDIT: Here are the photographs. There's a little bit of commentary for each one, and also two additional thoughts at the end, which I forgot to write earlier. Please pardon the way that the edges of the background cloth are visible in some of the photographs, and please pardon the fact that said cloth is a bit creased - my photography box just didn't want to co-operate today.
A quick shot of my Pandora open, and sitting on a Nintendo DS and DS Lite stand (for anyone who might want one, it's the Play-Stand by Hori). You can see that I haven't yet changed it from Xfce to Minimenu, as I started playing games and suchlike shortly after installing the hotfix. I'll get to that later. Also, dig my awesome Mega Man 10 desktop background, there. Sorry about the flash in this one - I did try to take one without it, but my camera doesn't take such sharp pictures with the flash deactivated.
A shot of the controls. You can also see the place where my adorably-missing right-hand lightpipe should be. I honestly find this kind of cute.
This photo highlights a minor cosmetic issue that I actually didn't notice until I closed the Pandora in order to take the photo. It's been with me all day, and I didn't even realise it was a bit raised at one side when closed, in spite of having opened and closed it several times during the course of the day.
The ports on the back of my Pandora. Here you can see the miniscule cosmetic difference between the shoulder buttons, too.
One for the Capcom fans. This shows a CPS2 A and B board combo for the game Rockman 2: The Power Fighters, along with the Pandora running that game. It's amazing to think that the game contained in that gigantic device in the background, can now be played on the much smaller machine that's sitting in front of it. My Pandora is running at 850MHz in this picture, which it seems to be perfectly stable at. I don't know if it can go higher than this because I haven't tried yet, though I do know that it becomes unstable at 900MHz.
Another angle of the Pandora and CPS2 setup. I tried to capture the game's attract mode, here, but unfortunately the flash made it somewhat difficult to see.
Before I stop writing, I must mention the stylus and the WiFi.
Regarding the stylus: There is a seam visible at the tip of mine. I'm sure someone else has commented on this, also. I'm going to file it off later.
Regarding the WiFi: The speed I get from it is barely any different from the speed my ThinkPad and MacBook get. It hasn't dropped any packets on me, and it's nice and speedy. I'm really very impressed.
Ok, I *think* that's everything, now. I hope it proves informative, or at least useful in some way.
EDIT: I forgot something else. One of the first games I tried was PandoraPanic! - it's very polished, and I couldn't help but smile. If I had to describe it in two words, those words would be: "Eclectic brilliance".
I could barely unwrap and open the box fast enough when it arrived. Retrieving the contents was an almost surreal experience - here I was holding a machine that I had thus far only seen in renders and other people's photographs. I popped out the battery to take a look at the serial number, which is (surprisingly) in the ~400 range (it's either 426 or 456 - I can't remember right now, as it was some hours ago and I'm letting it charge right now, so I can't double-check it).
My Pandora feels very solid and sturdy, with no real build issues of which to speak, except for a missing light-pipe on the right-hand side, a one or two millimetre bit of bezel-bowing at the bottom of the screen (which I *didn't even notice at all* until I thought to check for it a few moments ago), and an ever-so-slightly-stiffer-than-the-left-one right shoulder button (it also sits "back" a bit compared to the left one, but this is purely cosmetic, and is unnoticeable during use). However, I have a SNES controller that was like this once, which loosened up with moderate use - I fully expect that the same will be the case here, too. More Star Fox and Mega Man needed here, methinks.
If anyone from the team is reading this, can you please tell me if the lightpipes are a part that's snapped in from the outside or not? If so, can I shoot you an e-mail and get the missing one posted to me? Thanks.
The painted finish reminds me very much of the black version of the Game Boy Advance SP, though a bit less "shiny" than those, and it looks very professional, to me. Being reminded of the GBA SP made me quite nostalgic, which was a good start, I think.
The controls - every single one of them - are fantastic. This machine hasn't been out of my hands since around noon, and my arms, hands, and wrists don't hurt *at all*. That takes some doing - well done on the ergonomics, DaveC.
Also, I don't think I've come across such excellent game controls since the SNES' controller (which, as forum regulars may know, is my favourite controller of all time ). The "chunkiness" of the unit also helps - I really must commend the team for not trying to make the Pandora ridiculously thin. I have small hands, and found the Nintendo DS Lite and the Nintendo DSi to be far too thin to comfortably use the shoulder buttons on, for example (only those two - the original DS is exempt from this). No such problems here.The nubs, well, what can I say that hasn't been said about them aready? They're brilliant, and TrackPoint fans will be glad to know that using them for mousing in Xfce feels fairly close to using a TrackPoint. Both of the ones on my Pandora feel and behave the same, there doesn't seem to be any variation between how they respond.
I really like the keyboard, and adjusted to the layout within a few minutes or less. Your mileage may vary, though - I switch between at least two (sometimes three) different types of keyboard during the day on a daily basis, so I did not find this difficult in the slightest. It's very much designed for thumb-typing, and it works very well for this. I foresee it being very useful for my written projects, as well as for quick notes. All of my keys respond nicely and evenly, and it's a pleasure to type with. Using the game controls as the arrow keys and Home/End/Page-up/Page-down keys is very intuitive, too.
No dead pixels or ghosting are present on my screen, as far as I can see, and the backlight is very easy on my eyes at its highest brightness level. It looks like every game I own was made for it, it really does. So far I've tried out Rockman & Forte, Star Fox, and Mega Man 7 for the SNES, Mega Man 2 for the NES, Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo for the C64, Mega Man for MS-DOS, High Seas Havoc and Pulseman for the Mega Drive, and, in MAME, Rockman: The Power Battle, Rockman 2: The Power Fighters, Strider, and Mappy (yes, yes, I know - there's a lot of Mega Man games in there
). I also watched a bit of a movie which I bought on DVD and ripped to m4v last week, although I found that the mp4 rips that I did a year or two ago with an older version of HandBrake do not work - use the most recent ones, instead. The rip that worked was ffmpeg-encoded MPEG-4 video, with 160kbps AAC audio, and it looked and sounded as clean as a whistle and was very smooth.The finish on the touch-screen is very interesting - it looks matte, and feels a bit "rough" somehow. It makes quite a change from the usual shiny-looking screens you tend to see on handheld devices, both gaming and non.
The angle that the hinge locks at seems very natural to me, and the hinge on my unit is quite tight - if it's not at its locking position it will move if you jolt the unit, but I'd expect that of anything. I'm quite glad that it doesn't lock in the same spot that the various Nintendo DS models do, as I don't think that that would feel natural here.
The speakers can go very loud - I think they're actually a touch louder than the ones on my original Nintendo DS, which is very nice indeed.
The OS, I think, is incredibly polished for a very first release, and it's incredibly stable, too, in my experience. I've only had one crash of any sort, and that was entirely my own fault for trying to run the CPU at 900MHz - it ran stably for about ten minutes, but then suddenly hung up when I was trying to install the Community Codec Pack. A tip, here: Don't mess with your clock speed before installing important things. I had to re-download the PND to a different SD Card in order to be able to install it at all, after that! I've had one lone WiFi disconnection, and that's been while I was writing this. I'll have to get it reconnected before I hit the "Post" button.
All in all, my first experiences of the Pandora are worlds away from those I had with my GP2X. This is everything I had hoped for from an open handheld, and more - and this is only the first day! I can't wait to see what the future holds.
I think that about wraps up my first impressions, now. I will get my photography-box and camera out later tonight and take some photographs - I'll edit them into this post when they're done.
EDIT: Here are the photographs. There's a little bit of commentary for each one, and also two additional thoughts at the end, which I forgot to write earlier. Please pardon the way that the edges of the background cloth are visible in some of the photographs, and please pardon the fact that said cloth is a bit creased - my photography box just didn't want to co-operate today.
A quick shot of my Pandora open, and sitting on a Nintendo DS and DS Lite stand (for anyone who might want one, it's the Play-Stand by Hori). You can see that I haven't yet changed it from Xfce to Minimenu, as I started playing games and suchlike shortly after installing the hotfix. I'll get to that later. Also, dig my awesome Mega Man 10 desktop background, there.
Sorry about the flash in this one - I did try to take one without it, but my camera doesn't take such sharp pictures with the flash deactivated.A shot of the controls. You can also see the place where my adorably-missing right-hand lightpipe should be. I honestly find this kind of cute.
This photo highlights a minor cosmetic issue that I actually didn't notice until I closed the Pandora in order to take the photo. It's been with me all day, and I didn't even realise it was a bit raised at one side when closed, in spite of having opened and closed it several times during the course of the day.
The ports on the back of my Pandora. Here you can see the miniscule cosmetic difference between the shoulder buttons, too.
One for the Capcom fans. This shows a CPS2 A and B board combo for the game Rockman 2: The Power Fighters, along with the Pandora running that game. It's amazing to think that the game contained in that gigantic device in the background, can now be played on the much smaller machine that's sitting in front of it. My Pandora is running at 850MHz in this picture, which it seems to be perfectly stable at. I don't know if it can go higher than this because I haven't tried yet, though I do know that it becomes unstable at 900MHz.
Another angle of the Pandora and CPS2 setup. I tried to capture the game's attract mode, here, but unfortunately the flash made it somewhat difficult to see.
Before I stop writing, I must mention the stylus and the WiFi.
Regarding the stylus: There is a seam visible at the tip of mine. I'm sure someone else has commented on this, also. I'm going to file it off later.
Regarding the WiFi: The speed I get from it is barely any different from the speed my ThinkPad and MacBook get. It hasn't dropped any packets on me, and it's nice and speedy. I'm really very impressed.
Ok, I *think* that's everything, now. I hope it proves informative, or at least useful in some way.
EDIT: I forgot something else. One of the first games I tried was PandoraPanic! - it's very polished, and I couldn't help but smile. If I had to describe it in two words, those words would be: "Eclectic brilliance".
