Well I made it through 17 pages of this topic now so I should post a few comments.
First, I am not looking for perfection. That is an infinite process but there is such thing as a standard quality that any commercial device should meet. I spent so much time perfecting the guts of this thing and it is a true insult to my efforts to see this mold company send me such incomplete samples and call them 'final'. We will find out what level of purity the plastic was that made these cases. Maybe they know production plastic won't be swirled and greasy and so when they said we would be happy with these, they expected that we understood that. Communication is a tough one when they refuse to hold conversations for more than three minutes at a time. Don't ask me why they didn't put the silk screening on these parts because I was explicitly told they would have them. More lies.
There were a few more internal modifications for rev3 but most of the important ones came from the rev2 samples. A couple of changes for rev3 that I am happy about are a tighter fit on the screws which makes them feel more secure and closing up the nub surround so that the PCB isn't visible around the nub under certain lighting conditions. It also looks like they closed up a small gap in the lid that let a bit of backlight light shine through the front. The LCD cable slot took a step backwards with a bit of unevenness but since it was right last time, we can assume that more carefully made production parts will be back to normal.
The cases are still very solid. You can try to twist and bend them but they don't flex much. It will feel like a very solid device in your hands and functionally, everything works exactly as we want. The gaming controls are perfect. The keyboard is perfect and there has never been an issue with buttons getting stuck in the case or anything like that. The problems now are cosmetic. There are rough edges around the connectors, around the edges of that recessed channel in the front the SD cards, volume wheel, etc. and some on the edge of the base parts where the two halves go together. There are some sink marks too which might hide a bit better with a full, proper matte finish but they're there.
As some people have pointed out, a picture can say more than any amazing piece of software ever will and a reviewer crapping all over the case quality could spoil it for anyone considering the Pandora. I'm one of those people really. These cases aren't a disaster but I would want something to show off to my friends and having to explain the colored patches and rough edges is a little defeating.
Some pictures are posted on my photobucket and I'm not too sure making a video will show better quality. I will probably still make one anyway but unless I can really master the lighting, my 640x480 videos won't help you know if I'm holding a rev1, 2 or 3 case.
EDIT: Two more pages were written since typing this. Ah yes, the hinge area. There are clips in that area that hold the two halves tightly together and they screwed up somehow. On this revision, the recessed spots for the clips to sit in got completely evacuated and there are holes right through the case. They didn't do this on rev2. Rev2 just had roughness on the bottom edges of these parts and not the destruction of the clip channels like this time.
