ok, maybe I am looking at it weirdly then. Me and you read the same posts. I pulled from them the impression that ED is suggesting that they took the XD design, point and clicked a couple times, and an afternoon later you got a GPD Win, few days later you can have a printed case to demo.
If ED is saying it is quite the complex thing to make those changes, then I apologize.
While I wouldn't have said it that hard, it mostly is, once you decided what design changes you want to have.
As mentioned: Both the GPD XD and the GPD Win (and all tablets out there) have incredibly simple designs. Which is not meant to discredit anyone. It's great, it makes things cheaper to produce, easier to assemble, easier to design.
Why do you think chinese companies can spit out thousands of different tablets for 60 EUR end customer price? Because there's not much in there.
It's also the reason most phones and devices don't have replaceable batteries anymore: to save costs.
If you ever did CAD, you know how quickly something like that can be done:
The base layer is a rectangle. It gets some walls around it. The edges can be rounded (that's a normal tool in CAD), and you can cut out holes within seconds as well, or add pegs on any surface.
In CAD, everything you do is based on something. You can define the height or thickness of the pegs to all be the same. Once you change the parameters, it automatically happens to all of them. And you can move them around as you please.
You can even define locations, i.e. that one peg is always 1cm away from the edge, or even 1/3 of the total length of one edge (so if you change the length of an edge, the peg moves accordingly)
It's all non-destructive. If properly done, sizes, etc. can all be changed at ease.
So once designed, changing the backside from being a 10x15cm brick with hard edges to a 12x16cm form with rounded edges really is just changing three parameters: the length of the edges and the diameter of the roundness tool.
And those two look totally different, but the base is the same.
If you don't believe me, I can make a video for you showing that.
So, try to think in CAD way and then compare the XD with the Win again:
There's not that much that has changed, even if it looks totally different.
Which is great, and what I'm aiming for with the Pyra case as well: To be able to use it for any future enhancements without recreating everything (same with the PCB and the CPU upgradibility).
Doing it like that is not discrediting, it's how things should work for a company: Use your assets to make future projects faster, cheaper and better.
What takes longer than the design itself is the decision and thinking about what you want to change and how to solve possible issues. The design itself doesn't take long.
Now, as the question arose why we reused Pandoras design when we were recreating it instead of giving it a more modern look and what's so complex about it:
What's pretty simple for us is the LCD part. That's simple and it also was done very quickly. The battery lid and stylus are two parts that could also be created within a day.
The complex part is the battery compartment and the part with the keyboard in.
Those two are a lot more complex than any modern devices cases out there.
Why do they need to be so complex?
Well the battery compartment is needed to have a replaceable battery.
Instead of just having the battery glued into the case (like the GPD, the GCW, the Caanoo, most smartphones, etc.), there needs to be a compartment with aligned contacts.
So the backside can't be a simple rectangle with walls anymore, you need to add the compartment, the battery lid, etc.
So a replaceable battery makes things more complex (and adds thickness) which is why it's rare these days.
Then the keyboard: On the GPD, it's a simple cutout where the keyboard will be put in.
I assume it's one of those keyboards like you had in older smartphones (N900, e.g.), where the keyboard is one block you put in.
We could've done that as well, but didn't for two reasons:
1. I like Pandoras keyboard (with a keymat) better than those mobile keyboards (and according to others I asked, it's the same for them as well)
2. I have zero experience with those keyboards. Our money is very limited, and you've all seen with the Pandora what unexpected issues can occur when you do something new. So I needed to work with something we already had experience with, to avoid possible pitholes.
Another thing that added a lot of complexity actually is the size:
We have a lot of features on the PCB (4G, two SD card slots, replaceable CPU board, multiple SD Card slots, etc.). The easy easy way would have been to increase the width of the device, as that adds more space for all these parts.
But I didn't want to do that, as it would've made it hard pressing the middle keys of the keyboard (that's still my main concern with the GPD Win).
Thickness had to be added due to the battery size, but I set a limit for the width that had to be kept.
That meant: Nikolaus and the case designers had to work together, move the parts around so that they all fit in the narrow space and do not cause any issues (we don't want breaking cases).
That was pretty complex, but it's what I wanted to achieve.
GPD probably took the more simple approach:
The put everything they need on the PCB and then defined the case size.
Which is okay as well, but the middle keys of the keyboard could cause a problem here. We'll see, but that's my concern.
So, the Pyra is thick because of the replaceable battery, the replaceable CPU Board and the type of keyboard we use.
And it's complex, because I didn't want to increase the width so that all controls and keys are still easily accessible.
And it's similar to the Pandora because I can't afford to do any experiments right now, so better keep things as similar as possible to avoid issues and mistakes but improve it as good as possible.
And finally, I actually like Pandoras design very much.
I don't know why everything these days has to look so rounded, etc.
I still think for something like the Pyra or Pandora, a case like we have it looks and suits best
