GPD Win (x86 Computer / Palmtop)


I don't own a Win (at least not yet), but one advantage that good old Pandora has is the unkillable battery. I hope that maybe, maaaybe, the next Win, if it is ever released, will have an improved battery life. Two-to-three hours of gaming (according to some reports) is a bit weak in my humblest opinion.
 
You would have to shove a pretty big battery in the win to get anywhere near the Pandora battery life, wouldn't you? I mean its just a concept of the CPU. For power savings ARM>x86, no?
 
Got mine today.
First impression:
- Build quality is far better than expected (definitely more nicely done than eg the pandora)
- Machine works well (I have just been configuring windows and installing steam and games. Works fine. But no clue how battery life is during gaming)
- Fan seems do do its job
- Hardware keyboard. It is good to have one. But it is quite bad for typing. Nowhere near pandora. I expect far more from the pyra
- overall first look: I would say, an extremely nice device.
- Mouse mode works fine
- Dpad: average
- sticks seem to work fine
 
Citizen_Lurker said:
I don't own a Win (at least not yet), but one advantage that good old Pandora has is the unkillable battery. I hope that maybe, maaaybe, the next Win, if it is ever released, will have an improved battery life. Two-to-three hours of gaming (according to some reports) is a bit weak in my humblest opinion.
Click to expand...

If you clock the win down to roughly the same speed as the pandora you will likely see similar battery life to the pandora.

Turbo boost (on by default) is effectively overclocking the x86 processor to 2.4 ghz over the normal 1.6ghz (+50% OC) Just like overclocking reduces the battery life and increases the temps on the pandora.

If I'm doing something seriously stressful on the pandora with it overclocked I see about 3-4 hours out of it.

I haven't it done it yet, but I'm going to go from my normal 1.5ghz I have mine at to 1 ghz (maybe shut down 3 of the 4 cores) and play some emulator or something and see, I bet I'll get at least 3-4 hours out of it as well. (My initial thoughts is you'll see way better than that)

The problem with the 2-3 hour battery life is that it's not apples to apples comparison. Pandora can't do 2.4ghz stably (and doesn't have 4 cores) and isn't running skyrim either. Give them the same clock and run the same task and I think the results will surprise you.

With less stressful stuff I'm already seeing my normal 9-10 hours of battery life I get on my pandora. Haven't put it down long enough to effectively check the standby life but the standby drain with wifi off when not in use seems like it would last weeks as well.
 
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SNESFAN said:
With less stressful stuff I'm already seeing my normal 9-10 hours of battery life I get on my pandora. Haven't put it down long enough to effectively check the standby life but the standby drain with wifi off when not in use seems like it would last weeks as well.
Click to expand...

Well, I see your point. But what do mean exactly by "less stressful stuff"?
 
Internet browsing, youtube videos, emails, lightweight games, file manipulation, text editing, irc/chat stuff like that.
 
I got my GPD Win last night. First thing I did was disabled CPU Turbo Boost then tried to install Mageia Linux but it doesn't work well with UEFI so that didn't work.
 
In the maemo forums [1] a youtube video of a guy who has installed Xubuntu on the GPD Win was posted. [2] He has no 3D acceleration, no sound and his touchscreen is unusable because it still works in portrait mode. (At least that last issue could be easily fixed via xinput. [3])
Otherwise he says it's working fine.

Code: 
[1] https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1518342#510
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSVysKUmXM
[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/InputCoordinateTransformation
 
I'd like to save the disk image of the device to a uSD card or USB stick. Do you know of such software? Can I boot from those and restore the OS in a clean state?
 
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Played with it a few days and I'm a little disappointed with the way the controller works as it breaks with every SNES emulator I've tried. It must be in controller mode when the emulator is launched and stay in controller mode the entire time the emulator is open or it stops working (zsnes and older snes9x stops responding to the controller and new versions of 9x crash) and closing the lid switches control mode. Another problem is zsnes doesn't work with the touch screen.
Virtualboy and epsxe work great.
I am happy to say that after some tweaking the most demanding game I planned to play on it (Xcom 2) works great.
 
I got my Win in and it seems solid, except the A face button isn't depressing properly. Anyone have any insights or advice?

EDIT:
I found this teardown:

Did some verification to determine there was no issues with the interface between the mat and board, and the issue is resolving itself via wear in. At this point the A button is still noticeably stiffer, but working properly.
 
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This is starting to look like a much more viable option for me than the Pyra now. Having spent years faffing around with substandard tools in order to get my apps onto the Pandora (looking squarely at FPC here) I can now get them onto a handheld without having to port them. Hell, I can even install Delphi on the GPD device and develop on that instead - that's very, very attractive and tbh the keyboard issues pale into insignificance in the face of that benefit.

It's cheaper, too. And it's available. Having been through the Pandora circus, I refuse to pre-order the Pyra and it could easily be another year before it appears on sale to the general public.
 
I am very impressed with how powerful it actually is. I expected to be able to "run" Xcom 2 ONLY because it's turn based but the only problems I've had with it after updating the video drivers and some hidden unreal INI engine tweaks are the same ones I have on my gaming desktop that can otherwise run it at max settings.
 
Got mine from ED last Friday, as the weekend was filled with real life responsibilities, I did not really have much time to fiddle with it.
My observations so far:
  • not GPDs fault, just something I have to struggle with: I am still used to the Pandora. Whenever I want to use the arrow keys, I start using the DPAD > it just feels so natural to me. I actually was stuck on the first entry you have to make in the Windows setup wondering why I could not navigate in that "fricking" combobox. And I still want to press the [Fn] button in the lower right before hitting the button in the top left corner in order to "press" [ESC]
  • probably not GPDs fault (probably mine or maybe Microsofts): I have a hard time handling / understanding ACPI functions: Sometimes, when I think the device should just be sleeping, pressing it for a short period of time the device just won't wake up. I am not 100% sure, when to press the power button for a long period of time, sometimes it looks like the device is waking up from deep sleep sometimes it starts up fresh.
    Reboot does not work: If a try to reboot (via windows) the devices either shuts down, or starts the minimal "your device is loading" system and after that it shuts off.
    Yesterday I left the system charging for a while. When I came back I was unable to start (or wake up) the system. I tried pressing the power button for a longer period of time (several times) but I only was able to start the charging info. Only after disconnecting the system from the charger, I was able to start Windows again
  • either MS or GPDs fault:
    Sometimes WiFi isn't working. After a reboot WiFi is usually working fine, but after several times going into sleep mode and waking up, no WiFi networks are found. This can only be resolved by a "reboot".
  • the sticks have a rubber coating which collects dirt pretty fast (mine were already dirty, when I first opened the device)
  • I am not sure, I will be a happy camper next summer. This is the opposite of a matte screen, which is already annoying when you have to cope with ever changing (often fluorescent) lighting conditions on my public transport route, should be really bad when the sun is shining bright.
  • The shoulder buttons are "wobbly" and they are protrude way to far out of the device for my taste (but they work spot on)
  • no dedicated button to de/activate WiFi and to control screen brightness, but maybe there is a keyboard-shortcut
  • The surface is too smooth: due the device being quite heavy (in relation to its size) it slipped out of my hands several times in the beginning, but I have already adapted.
  • Speaker holes in the case are on the wrong side, they should be facing towards the user, not to the right - I usually conceal them with my thenar, so the sound gets dampened. But if I change my grip the sound gets loud again, which distracts me while gaming.
  • No warped or dented bottom, my unit sits flat on the table
  • The keyboard is fine, and I don't really have a problem with it being not in the center, the only thing I would really love to have would be some space between the keys, I often press adjacent keys accidentally while typing.
  • Gaming controls are good, not stellar, but good. I am missing a definitive pressure point for the action buttons. The placement for [Select] and [Start] is bad. I stopped playing consoles (and became a super-real-awesome-core gamer), when the SNES was roughly one year on the market, so I don't care about the "L3s"
  • Using the manual fan control is a lot less cumbersome then I had anticipated. Fan isn't silent, but the noise level is acceptable
  • Internal flash speed is ok, nothing fancy, but its definetely not the slowest on the market. It outruns the internal flash of my Thinkpad 8 easily
  • General speed seems also to be ok, but did not test that very much. Made a quick test with Bioshock (original Humblebundle release) and it was running quite well.
    Currently hooked to Shovel Knight, such an awesome game, works without problems (exception: the badly placed [select] button). I also wanted to test Bastion, but the installer won't start because it wants 48 more vertical pixels.
  • Speaking of pixels, anybody who wants a 1080p screen on such a device, with a pretty much standard, desktop usage scenario in mind, should consider modding a gameboy magnifier onto it, it will be dearly needed.
  • only a small detail, but I like to position of the (sadly only) indicator LED, whether the device is opened or closed I can still see it
All in all, I am pretty happy with "my" purchase.

Edit:
  • (As expected) it ships with Windows 10 Home Edition - which is a bummer for several reasons, but having no built in encryption on a mobile device (nowadays) is kind of a bummer
 
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@thatgui

Just in regards to the rubber joystick covers, they are just that - covers. They can be replaced. Actually the really nice thing here is that they are the same sticks as used in the PS Vita, so all the joystick covers on the market for the Vita will fit on the WINs sticks. And there is a large range of various different cover designs to try - which is nice.
 
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