GPD Win (x86 Computer / Palmtop)

[Mr_Loon]

The GPD WIN reached it's funding goal of $100K just now. 342 backers in less than 7 days , about 70% of which are Japanese, probably due to the Japanese Engadget story.

Wow, they've made their target already. Thought they might have to show some kind of Demo to do that after the slow start. I guess it's not too hard for a curious buyer to find out what to expect from a Z8500 SOC though.

Isn't Windows big in Japan as well?

I think handhelds have always been popular in Japan, they had loads of cool stuff like this which IIRC never saw a western release. Always thought that Japan as a gadget loving nation with relatively high disposable income was a great untapped market for Pandora, hopefully Pyra can turn a few heads there as well.

and Pyra will release even more late?

Who knows? All I know is Pyra is very close to having a working prototype & GPD Win has not even finalised their design. If the Pyra Prototype phase goes well or the GPD Win hits any sort of major design problem then I wouldn't be surprised to see Pyra ship first.

 

[ekianjo]

They chose indiegogo precisely because they only have a concept on paper. Thats bound to end in disaster again.

 

[SNESFAN]

Again?

The XD was pretty good, that started as a concept on a Chinese Kickstarter.

http://z.jd.com/project/details/16107.html

 

[EvilDragon]

Again?

The XD was pretty good, that started as a concept on a Chinese Kickstarter.

Well, the XD is kind of a mixed bag for me.
I sold about 50 so far... some had fingerprints on the screen (easy to fix, but shouldn't happen), one had a squeaky nub, one had a scratch on the touchscreen.
Three customers complained about bleeding light, one customer had a failed screen after a week, two want to return it since they're not content with the build quality.

So about 10 out of 50 have some quality issues. What's great is that GPD offers to replace faulty devices, but for a shop, it's still bad... either I have to control each one thoroughly before shipping (though that should be the job of the manufacturer) or I get quite a few returns.
Well, at least I clean the fingerprints before shipping )

I hope that improves with the GPD Win.

The XD is a nice device, I grabbed one for myself as a test, but these things are a bit of a showstopper for shops.

 

[SNESFAN]

I'm insanely pleased with my XD, for the price, it's an amazing value. It's not perfect by any means, but bang for buck it's definitely above par. Compared to anything in its price range with the exception of the nvidia shield, it's tops.

If the GPD WIN maintains the quality of the XD, adds a keyboard and is an x86-64 I'll be happy for $300

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm insanely pleased with my XD, for the price, it's an amazing value. It's not perfect by any means, but bang for buck it's definitely above par. Compared to anything in its price range with the exception of the nvidia shield, it's tops.

If the GPD WIN maintains the quality of the XD, adds a keyboard and is an x86-64 I'll be happy for $300

For $300, yes. But the retail price was mentioned to be $500, which will be the normal price.
For that price, such issues should not happen (unless you are just a bunch of unexperienced people who try to make their first handheld ))

If the GPD XD works, it's nice. But stuff like failing screens or squeaky hinge from the beginning should NOT happen.
These units are not the same as yours, they are exceptions - but those exceptions are too many right now.

If 2 units out of 100 have issues, that's normal. But 10 out of 50 is not what a shop wants

 

[fusion_power]

Well, the XD is kind of a mixed bag for me.
I sold about 50 so far... some had fingerprints on the screen (easy to fix, but shouldn't happen), one had a squeaky nub, one had a scratch on the touchscreen.
Three customers complained about bleeding light, one customer had a failed screen after a week, two want to return it since they're not content with the build quality.

So about 10 out of 50 have some quality issues. What's great is that GPD offers to replace faulty devices, but for a shop, it's still bad... either I have to control each one thoroughly before shipping (though that should be the job of the manufacturer) or I get quite a few returns.
Well, at least I clean the fingerprints before shipping )

I hope that improves with the GPD Win.

The XD is a nice device, I grabbed one for myself as a test, but these things are a bit of a showstopper for shops.

To stay fair, the Pandora had more (quality) issues at the beginning.

 

[EvilDragon]

... aaaand that's exactly the reason I mentioned that with the small comapny.
And it's a reason we didn't have any distributors... see?

 

[SNESFAN]

They just responded to my question on there saying they will have 64bit UEFI, so Linux will likely be a thing on this. (Not official Linux port of course)

Also they are confirming the move to the x5-8550

 

[vcoleiro1]

They just responded to my question on there saying they will have 64bit UEFI, so Linux will likely be a thing on this. (Not official Linux port of course)

Also they are confirming the move to the x5-8550

At least one of the things I raised and pushed managed to get a change through. But I did raise that one early in the piece..

 

[Mr_Loon]

For $300, yes. But the retail price was mentioned to be $500, which will be the normal price.

My bet would be that the actual retail price of the GPD Win will be in the region of $350 based on the GPD XD typically being sold at 30%-40% below the recommended retail price. Supply & demand will tell in the end I guess. $350 is still something of a premium price for a Chinese handheld so it will be interesting to see if this relatively high price will lead to improved quality & quality assurance.

If I was thinking of buying a GPD Win then my main concern would be the truly strange decisions that seem to have been made in the concept/initial design phase. Such as making a keyboard to be used with thumb typing not easily accessible to the right thumb & turning off the gaming buttons & DPad when mouse mode is selected.
They do however seem to be willing to listen to their customers so if enough potential buyers voice their concerns about such things then who knows...

Also they are confirming the move to the x5-8550

Seems like a sensible move as both the Z8500 & Z8550 retail at $23 what will be very interesting to see is how they deal with the heat generated from a SOC running at 2.4GHz in a small handheld.

 

[SNESFAN]

Running most of the time at a max of 1.44Ghz and the 14nm process should help keep it cooler than other comparable things

 

[EvilDragon]

If I was thinking of buying a GPD Win then my main concern would be the truly strange decisions that seem to have been made in the concept/initial design phase. Such as making a keyboard to be used with thumb typing not easily accessible to the right thumb & turning off the gaming buttons & DPad when mouse mode is selected.
They do however seem to be willing to listen to their customers so if enough potential buyers voice their concerns about such things then who knows...

Well, that's something hard to tell and pretty weird.
Many people on Dingoonity actually told them with the first release how to improve the keyboard, but then in January someone was told that a change is not possible as the PCBs are already being created.
Now on IndieGogo they seem to tell people they'll think about it... so I don't know, do they listen or not?

Only time will tell, but it sure is weird right now.

 

[ThinkPad]

They just responded to my question on there saying they will have 64bit UEFI, so Linux will likely be a thing on this. (Not official Linux port of course)

Also they are confirming the move to the x5-8550

Great news!

 

[fusion_power]

... aaaand that's exactly the reason I mentioned that with the small comapny.
And it's a reason we didn't have any distributors... see?

Does not change the past. Anf for the future, if GPD is capable to learn, they may improve their QC. Stil la risky area when dealing with chinese companies but let's hope the best.

Seems like a sensible move as both the Z8500 & Z8550 retail at $23 what will be very interesting to see is how they deal with the heat generated from a SOC running at 2.4GHz in a small handheld.

By the way, what's the retail price of the OMAP5? I have no comparison there.

 

[CrazyIvan]

They just responded to my question on there saying they will have 64bit UEFI, so Linux will likely be a thing on this. (Not official Linux port of course)

Also they are confirming the move to the x5-8550

32 bit UEFI isn't a problem for linux, it's just unsupported and require additional steps to install bootloader. The problems are in drivers as usual. While 3d should work, wi-fi,sound, touchscreen and even sd card may not depending on components GPD will use.
64 bit UEFI means windows will also be 64 bit that is good.

 

[SNESFAN]

Preaching to the choir brother, I said the exact same thing a few pages back.

Edit: some people were questioning the existence of UEFI, others said problems if 32 bit. I was more or less calming both concerns in one statement.

 

[PowerGod]

Many UEFI firmwares are able to run ONLY an OS, in these cases dual boot is not possible (mainly because Windows will constantly overwrite it at every boot)

 

[SNESFAN]

I haven't ran across a single system I couldn't disable secure boot as a gui option and boot my own OS from external

 

[PowerGod]

I haven't ran across a single system I couldn't disable secure boot as a gui option and boot my own OS from external

I wasn't speaking about SecureBoot, that mostly should be disabled (with also the fastboot) because many Linux distro doesn't support it, I was referring to the fact that many uefi firmwares does not search for different configurations except for the one called "boot" or "windows"...

in these cases, you are able to start a Lunix distro overwriting one of those configurations with the proper one, and you can also make grub start from it, and then you can also put in grub a choice for "Linux/Windows", but all runs well if you only boot Linux... because at the time you choose from grub to boot Windows, Windows will overwrite that configuration... and at the next boot grub is gone....