Have You Encountered Any Defects On Your Pandora So Far?

[quartercast]

Thanks mali for fixing up the title and question, it reads as more neutral now.

Well, including the screen bezel without further explanations doesn't make much sense.

The poll seems to be too complex for me to make sense... maybe it should be way more simpler to find out any proper results.

Would you prefer it more detailed or more simple? In my first post I invited people to post more details about their specific pandora issues within the thread itself. The poll is actually very simple.

In the other thread, you and craig seemed to be thinking "No returned pandoras = No hardware defects". I was interested in finding out if that was really the case.

Edit: I updated my first post to include some explanations and examples

 

[Pleng]

No, not fuel them. But if more people are interested in Batch 2 and see this thread, the first thing they see is "80% faulty".
They don't know about WHAT is faulty and / or if it is already solved for future units, etc.

That is something that scares them off, I guess

To be honest, the thread should be 'what problems have you had with your Pandora?' and the first yes/no problem shouldn't be there. You know how many Pandoras you've shipped so the rest of the data could be useful information.

He criticized the GP2X when Pandora has a worse quality.

The GP2X had a FAR WORSE failure rate. And, given the crap joystick you could say that all GP2Xs were effectively broken!

Initial GP2X's may have had a worse failure rate but, you know, my (later on) GP2X felt solid. My DS felt solid. My Dingoo felt really solid. All the bits felt like the were gonna stay in place forever. The things felt like they were made from high quality materials. The Pandora... doesn't. Maybe it's an illusion caused by the glossy finish of the other devices but the Pandora looks and feels fragile - especially the top half.

I mean, how many GP2X's shipped with cracks in the cases? How many developed cracks after a few weeks of use?

 

[quartercast]

To be honest, the thread should be 'what problems have you had with your Pandora?' and the first yes/no problem shouldn't be there. You know how many Pandoras you've shipped so the rest of the data could be useful information.

Why shouldn't it be there? By asking the question, I want to know as a percentage how many people have perfect pandoras, i.e. no defects at all. You can get the same answer from the second question, but you'd have to calculate it yourself ((No fault votes/ overall votes)*100). Why do that when I can get a computer to do it for me?

 

[Iorgy77]

I got lucky with my gp2x first edition. I think it developed a fault much later on though where it will only work from the PSU and cant be run from batteries.

 

[Pleng]

Why shouldn't it be there? By asking the question, I want to know as a percentage how many people have perfect pandoras, i.e. no defects at all. You can get the same answer from the second question, but you'd have to calculate it yourself ((No fault votes/ overall votes)*100). Why do that when I can get a computer to do it for me?

Because, as has been stated about a thousand times already in this thread, people who are perfectly happy with their Pandora are not going to bother reading or voting in this poll. There are probably plenty of Pandora owners who don't even visit the form and are unlikely to do so unless the have a problem.

Why get a computer to do it for you when it's not going to give you accurate results?

The only way to get anywhere near an accurate result is count the amount of unique people who have identified a problem with their unit and work that out as a percentage of the total amount of Pandora's shipped.

Granted, that doesn't take account for the (probably fairly small) portion of people who have a problem and just live with it, or people like me who just don't vote in polls, but it's gonna be an awful lot more accurate than just assuming that everybody who has a Pandora is going to vote regardless.

 

[quartercast]

people who are perfectly happy with their Pandora are not going to bother reading or voting in this poll

Well that's quite negative, but each to his own. Please keep posting, you'll bump the poll up and more people will vote. I prefer to rely on the curiosity of Pandorians and their :wub: of polls

The only way to get anywhere near an accurate result is count the amount of unique people who have identified a problem with their unit and work that out as a percentage of the total amount of Pandora's shipped.

Which is what the "yes" part of the question tells you.

 

[Lorkile]

I had to send mine back, two dead nubs and the screen bezel issue on arrival. The nubs were my only reason, and it's been so long since I last saw my Pandora.

 

[Alpha2]

The more of any device that exists the higher the chance of failure in any part of it.

There are 6-700 pandoras in existence and sure some will have faults, in the grand scheme of consumer devices it's a tiny sampling group to even try and judge by. If you had 10 thousand out there chances are the fail rate percentage might drop even if 100 of them went bad but as it is we have to wait just for 4000 of them to even be available. Nintendo could have a thousand bad DSs in a month but they sell like 3 million of them in that same time so no one really hears the complaints in the white noise of happy customers with un-broken units.

 

[gaterooze]

Nah, you are WAY off base, I think craig comes across more like Bernard Black from "Black Books"

YES. Absolutely - and who couldn't love that?

 

[bradleyb01]

Fascinating thread.

I guess I feel fortunate that so far, haven't noticed any defects, knock on wood. I DON'T consider the minimally bowed bezel as a defect as it is hardly noticeable and has not affected operation of the unit in any way.

I got a one-nubber in June and both nubs seem to be just fine after some canned air and some fiddling and calibrating when I got it. In fact, I don't bother calibrating them when it boots and they seem to work pretty well.

The closest thing to a defect that I have experienced was that my A button would occasionally stick, but it has noticeably improved after several weeks of use and I would rate it as normal now, I am guessing that it had some excess plastic which has worn down with use.

I suppose that if a defect arises, I would have it repaired and be very sad while it has gone as I use it around 8 hours a day now both for work and play. Its pretty fun to remote in to a server via Reminna using nubs for a mouse while I am not at my desk at work. It's even more fun playing Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy Origins, etc., at home!

I also own a GP2X F100 that I had to order a Joystick replacement cap for about a year ago and would definitely choose the Pandora over it, even though I have been fairly happy with the GP2X as well.

I would ask some of you who seem a little bitter on this thread, are you still happy that you bought the Pandora, or do you feel that you should have bought something else? I know that I am quite happy with mine, but maybe my expectations weren't for a perfect device since I opted for a one nub unit and after I saw the videos of the Town Hall where these things were assembled. (Just kidding, no offense craigix - we have Grange halls in my part of the world that look quite the same as your site and the only products to come out of them are cookies and macramé Santas at Christmas bazaars ... ).

 

[nagy]

Well, mine isn't defected, only a battery consumption is high, as it doesn't go into standby overnight (my theory) - but it'll be fixed with next hotfix.

oh yeah, case quickly loses it's look, as finish is good, but very thin and goes off easily.

but all in all, these are minor annoyances h34r:

 

[Pleng]

Well that's quite negative, but each to his own.

No it's realistic.

The only way to get anywhere near an accurate result is count the amount of unique people who have identified a problem with their unit and work that out as a percentage of the total amount of Pandora's shipped.

Which is what the "yes" part of the question tells you.

No it doesn't.

Not unless you're manage to get a total response of about 700 people to your poll.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Recieved in June. First my LCD cable went, then my left nub stopped returning to center. Right nub still works reasonably. Bezel was bowed from the beginning, and the case was slightly separated between the SD slots at the front. My shoulder buttons get a bit loose sometimes.

Also, the Europlug on my adapter got bent (during shipping, maybe?). I'm assuming that the prongs are meant to be straight and not pointing inwards. Still works when I shove it into the adapter, though. I'm glad I can get all this fixed when I get my warranty return.

 

[psychodegu]

Does any one else find it weird how each time the option to vote, if there is no defect/fault (which appears 3 times), the votes for no defects decreases as you go down the survey. This leads me to think the data is useless, and self contradictory.

 

[r10crw]

I believe I have what you call the screen bezel in that it is around o.5 mm away at the bottom but this is not a problem, and I dont really think its fair to call it a hardware problem. Im also wondering if this was removed would the polls still look so negetive? I think too many fussy people in the world.

 

[Exophase]

Remove the 35 people who listed bezel and you still have 30/61 people who list the nubs as faulty, which IMO is representative of a major problem. The 20/61 who list the shoulder buttons faulty are also a major concern. 10 of those people who listed faults didn't list the bezel, so who knows how far down the overall number would go if you remove it. For all you know it could still be 45/61, or something pretty close. I'm sure the poll results would still look very negative.

61 out of < 800 is a very substantial statistical sampling. I don't understand the criticism of the veracity of the complaints. I don't see why the nature of the forums would bias the results; I mean, I don't even see a strong argument for it, much less the requisite evidence that this argument holds true. You can claim that the unhappy are more vocal and likely to participate in the poll, but this forum is full of people who have strongly supported the device for years and I think there'd be at least as much incentive to put it in as good a light as possible.

The only way to get anywhere near an accurate result is count the amount of unique people who have identified a problem with their unit and work that out as a percentage of the total amount of Pandora's shipped.

Which is what the "yes" part of the question tells you.

No it doesn't.

Not unless you're manage to get a total response of about 700 people to your poll.

So I take it you have absolutely zero faith in statistics. I hope whatever you university program you take or have taken doesn't require it.

 

[Exophase]

How is it "not scientific"? What is it not adding that's new, and why is that a requirement? I find your desire to not create drama to be a greater bias than the nature of the poll. If OP is really sincere about improving the device then polls like these are useful and burying your head in the sand is not. If the approach is wrong then it should be empirical demonstrated why and new approaches pushed forward, not just shouting "meaningless, meaningless, it's all meaningless."

 

[tsh]

61 out of < 800 is a very substantial statistical sampling.

However, you could take the view that all the people who are dis-satisfied have voted. It is a self-selected sample, which makes it pretty difficult to re-baseline to represent the total population. All that can be claimed for this is to show how common any one fault was over the others, not the total rate.

 

[EvilDragon]

That's kinda true, it doesn't help if many people say "Nubs, LCD Cables and Shoulder buttons are broken" when we are aware this was a problem of the first units.

Shoulder buttons were solved after the first 100 or so units had been built, LCD cables were solved after 200 and nubs, well, they are now being tested and revised by the manufacturer.

Bad thing about the nubs is: There are two on each unit that can fail. So even if the nubs have a lowe failure rate than e.g. the LCD cables, MORE Pandoras will be affected (since it's most likely one out of the two that fail).

Basically, what we learnt from this thread is nothing new:
The screen bezel has a small hole we can't easily fix, the shoulder buttons need to be improved, the LCD cables were bad and the nubs had problems which is why we the manufacturer is working on that.

We knew this since a few weeks already.
It's good to know though that these seem to be the only real problems - as that are exactly the problems we already fixed (or are working on fixing).

 

[EvilDragon]

61 out of < 800 is a very substantial statistical sampling.

However, you could take the view that all the people who are dis-satisfied have voted. It is a self-selected sample, which makes it pretty difficult to re-baseline to represent the total population. All that can be claimed for this is to show how common any one fault was over the others, not the total rate.

And that's probably the case - as in human nature, most only raise their word when they have something to complain about

The poll basically shows us WHAT faults people have IF they have faulty units.
But not really how many faulty units are out there. Unless it comes to the point where it has at least about 300 - 400 votes.