How will the Pandora 2 differentiate itself from the market ?

[Binky]

No, thank you.

 

[_wb_]

Forearm mounting: meh, I prefer to use two hands (typing or using game controls with only 1 hand kind of sucks). So indeed: "no, thanks" on that one.


Phone and GPS: probably not going to happen because of certification costs (at least that's what I remember from earlier threads), but would be nice indeed (especially 3G internet and GPS would be cool additions). Then again, it's easy enough to add that functionality with a USB dongle, so perhaps a workaround would be to have some spot - preferably somehow internally in the case, so nothing sticks out anywhere - where you can plug in small USB stuff (like such a dongle or a small enough memory stick).


Ruggedized: Yes, a moderately ruggedized design would be nice for the P2, given that a lot of the problems with the P1 are about its fragility: case cracks, loose shoulder buttons, battery lid problems (tabs breaking off, battery contacts disconnecting briefly when you drop the Pandora from a height of 3cm, causing a reboot), dirt problems with the touch screen or dpad, etc.


Something that would be (to some extent) water-proof, dirt-proof, safe to drop etc. would be quite cool. Having no moveable parts and no need for ventilation is a good start (in contrast to many laptops that still have spinning disks and active cooling), so why not take it a bit further and make a case out of metal and rubber (or something) to create a device that is hard to break? With the clamshell design we already have a huge advantage over smartphones in that respect, since we don't have to expose glass to the outside.


Trying to be as slim and sleek as possible is not going to differentiate the P2 from all the other stuff. Make it strong and durable instead. Not like a smartphone that is supposed to have a short lifetime anyway, because in 1 or 2 years you're supposed to buy the next model. Make it something that will last a lifetime, like some of the retro devices we all love. You know, those 30 year old computers and consoles that are still working today, while something you bought 10 years ago (or even just 5 years ago) is already broken beyond repair. I want the P2 to be something timeless.

 

[LuSimon]

Trying to be as slim and sleek as possible is not going to differentiate the P2 from all the other stuff. Make it strong and durable instead. Not like a smartphone that is supposed to have a short lifetime anyway, because in 1 or 2 years you're supposed to buy the next model. Make it something that will last a lifetime, like some of the retro devices we all love. You know, those 30 year old computers and consoles that are still working today, while something you bought 10 years ago (or even just 5 years ago) is already broken beyond repair. I want the P2 to be something timeless.

~I totally agree with that.

 

[Klumpen]

Forearm mounting: meh, I prefer to use two hands (typing or using game controls with only 1 hand kind of sucks). So indeed: "no, thanks" on that one.

Not for gaming of course. -.-


I thought the possibility of changing the form is the principle of a modular system.


taking it off the armstrap shouldn't be a problem at all. -.-


The OpenPandora was designed to be an all-in-one gadget, so adding a proper easy to use communication/gps-device


to the catalogue of possibilities would still follow the basic idea, or did i get it wrong?


The GD300 isn't as far away from that as it seems.

 

[_wb_]

Yeah but I think it will/should still be a clamshell. And I don't really see how you would strap that to your arm. Unless...


Maybe the hinge should go further than 180 degrees? At 240 degrees you could perhaps make it wrap around you arm in such a way that the screen is visible and the keyboard can still be used.

 

[Binky]

Trying to be as slim and sleek as possible is not going to differentiate the P2 from all the other stuff. Make it strong and durable instead. Not like a smartphone that is supposed to have a short lifetime anyway, because in 1 or 2 years you're supposed to buy the next model. Make it something that will last a lifetime, like some of the retro devices we all love. You know, those 30 year old computers and consoles that are still working today, while something you bought 10 years ago (or even just 5 years ago) is already broken beyond repair. I want the P2 to be something timeless.

~I totally agree with that.

quote++

 

[MisterBrisby]

If the P2's hardware can be upgraded (faster processor, more RAM etc.) then it would stick out of the masses, I think.


There is no smartphone or tablet that can be upgraded, AFAIK.

 

[Binky]

then it would stick out of the masses

Smartphones can be upgraded by buying a new phone contract

 

[Sebastian Castro]

I bought my Pandora because I don't want a fancy smartphone and then receiving a call and say: "S#!t, shut up! I can't answer here because it's dangerous". I wanted a separate device, open, PC like, pocket sized. I had a Pocket PC before and it was disappointing now that I get to play with Android I see it's that same bull shit.


I think that, with an updated SoC and similar functions than the rest of the market, the desktop light-weight OS and durability would make it stand out. The best target market for the Pandora imo, is the selective costumer, the one that thinks before buying and the nostalgic. I don't think there's marketing bull shit space in the project/community.

 

[LuSimon]

Exactly that is a great point that you have there.

 

[Binky]

The pandora should attempt to be far removed from as many competitors as possible, that way we can collect the digruntled outcasts from many product groups.


altenative PMP


alternative emulator box


alternative sat-nav


not a tablet


etc


'small, androidy and sleek' increases competition from the smartphone market. The fewer competitors, the better

 

[overgauss]

Ben Nanonote, imovio iKit, Peek, and arguably the Zipit Z2 are all sleek and are FAR removed from smartphones. They are all easily pocketable, each with their respective pros and cons. No one is arguing for something so sleek as to detract from useability or functionality in such a way that the mere fact that something has a smaller form factor automatically means it is either a cellphone or competing with the cellphone market. The argument so far has been reduced formfactor within reason.


The people arguing against "sleakness" are generally arguing against something that no one has proposed (that I know of). Arguing for something unneccessarily large is just as bad as arguing against the phantom argument of something unnecessarily sleek. A happy medium is what most people want. This can't happen because of the fixation on twin SD and mechanically flawed standard USB requirements.


It has already been determined that the next pandora will be smaller. What hasn't been determined is how sleek it will be. Something that slides easily into the pocket, is well balanced, and easy to take advantage of the full controls is something we all want. Smaller components imply large batteries and additional hardware/functionality. I declare that a good thing.

 

[thatgui]

Ben Nanonote, imovio iKit, Peek, and arguably the Zipit Z2 are all sleek and are FAR removed from smartphones. They are all easily pocketable, each with their respective pros and cons. No one is arguing for something so sleek as to detract from useability or functionality in such a way that the mere fact that something has a smaller form factor automatically means it is either a cellphone or competing with the cellphone market. The argument so far has been reduced formfactor within reason.

My Ti98 calculator is also sleek - what is the point of this ? Its no clamshell for sure, but the clamshell design is the only thing the examples you gave have in common with the Pandora.

The people arguing against "sleakness" are generally arguing against something that no one has proposed (that I know of). Arguing for something unneccessarily large is just as bad as arguing against the phantom argument of something unnecessarily sleek. A happy medium is what most people want. This can't happen because of the fixation on twin SD and mechanically flawed standard USB requirements.

No one ever argued for the P2 beeing unneccessarily large, why sould anyone ? Most people here argue for skip sleekness for features, everyone is happy with a sleek Pandora.


What do you mean by "mechanically flawed standard USB requirements".

It has already been determined that the next pandora will be smaller. What hasn't been determined is how sleek it will be. Something that slides easily into the pocket, is well balanced, and easy to take advantage of the full controls is something we all want. Smaller components imply large batteries and additional hardware/functionality. I declare that a good thing.

Thats nice, but what components will be so much smaller (except for the SDCard slots) to gain so much additional free space ?

 

[Exophase]

What do you mean by "mechanically flawed standard USB requirements".

He's been doing this as retaliation for Binky calling microUSB mechanically flawed. I doubt he'd be saying it otherwise. His justification is that full USB is "only" rated for 1500 insertion/removal cycles vs 10,000 for microUSB. Mind you, Binky's complaint has nothing to do with insertion ratings and instead has to do with how securely the receptacle can be mounted to the board. I've had the miniUSB port come off my GP2X (and pull a trace, making an attempt solder it back on fail), but that was more poorly soldered. Still, it's a bigger risk with something that has fewer auxiliary solder pads and surface area.


Of course the idea that people will want to insert and remove from their full USB ports more than 1500 times is silly. That's an insertion and removal every day for over 4 years. Since it'd mainly be used for peripherals it's going to see less insertions and removals than the mini/microUSB port that'll be useful for things like charging and communication, which is exactly why mini and microUSB were adjusted to handle more cycles.


The whole "sleekness" argument falls kind of flat given that it's a completely subjective term.

 

[overgauss]

Really ep? Really?


Binky said this:

microUSB is mechanically flawed

With no qualifications.


To which I responded with this:

Someone mentioned that microUSB is mechanically flawed. Unless he meant something very specific, evidence suggests otherwise.

So then he clarified with this:

My point about microUSB was that the connectors break off the circuit board VERY Easily.
Tiny surface-mount pads are not good for something which may receive rough treatment.


The argument above is for perfect use, not for real life

And I agreed that SMT connectors would be bad but showed that USB 3.0 connectors have through hole attachments via this link. That source also shows SMT "full" size USB connectors as well. So the SMT issue is really a non-issue as it is used in both standard and micro sized connectors. I used "mechanically flawed" sarcastically because I previously cited DURABILITY like so:

Durability
The newer Micro-USB receptacles are designed for up to 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal between the receptacle and plug, compared to 1,500 for the standard USB and 5,000 for the Mini-USB receptacle. This is accomplished by adding a locking device and by moving the leaf-spring connector from the jack to the plug, so that the most-stressed part is on the cable side of the connection. This change was made so that the connector on the less expensive cable would bear the most wear instead of the more expensive micro-USB device.[27]

Of course the idea that people will want to insert and remove from their full USB ports more than 1500 times is silly

This is a rediculous assertion. No one is making the claim that anyone is going to make 1500 insertions. It's a metric used to describe DURABILITY. Do you not understand that? If you went to a doctor and he said he'd do a procedure to save your life with a 1 in 1500 chance of death versus another doctor that could do the same procedure with a 1 in 10,000 chance in death which would you prefer? I'm merely using that as an example to illlustrate how the numbers can be used as a metric to describe the likelyhood of failure, or the durability of a product. You know like crash test ratings? Do I really have to explain this to you?

Thatgui:

My Ti98 calculator is also sleek - what is the point of this ? Its no clamshell for sure, but the clamshell design is the only thing the examples you gave have in common with the Pandora.

My point was that sleek != cellphone and every device I listed can run linux distros such as SID, OpenWRT, Debian, Angstrom etc. So they have more in common with the pandora than you might think. There's game emu etc etc. In fact I am in the process of installing Debian onto my Pixi.

Spoiler

Debian Linux on Pixi with Executah!


All


If you want to have some more fun with your pixi, go follow the steps here...


DebianChroot - WebOS Internals


and install Debian on your pixi! In a quick test I ran sunspider in the stock browser (OC'd to 806mhz) and in Chromium browser through Debian, and my speed was doubled!!


I am also able to set up VPN connections, use Remote Desktop, and run java .jar files all from within Debian. So give it a shot and report back.


Thanks,


Pez

No one ever argued for the P2 beeing unneccessarily large, why sould anyone ? Most people here argue for skip sleekness for features, everyone is happy with a sleek Pandora.

Exactly. Just as no one is arguing for it to be unnecessarily large, no one is arguing for it to be so sleek as to skip features. That is the entire point. Yet people consistintly bring up sleekness when no one that I can find has even ASKED for it to be sleek in the first place. I have consistently stated I would not want to sacrifice functionality for example.

Thats nice, but what components will be so much smaller (except for the SDCard slots) to gain so much additional free space ?

I can't state for certain but Craigix has said that he learned a lot from the first run and that things will be definitely smaller. For instance there is newer eMMC memory at 10nanometers with a read of 240mb/s that should drop in 2013 (write speed is still at 90 mb/s iirc. This means a very tiiiiny internal memory footprint). I expect smaller SoC's, microUSB/HDMI would help as well. The general trend is that electronic components get smaller over time with either an increase or consistency in power, speed, capacity etc. Evidence can be found everywhere and I'm not in a position to hazard a guess as to which components are going to be used in the P2. Look at all the Raspberry Pi/Gumstix spinoffs and copy cats for example. Now we have the possibility of 64 core parallel processing SoCs roughly the size of a credit card.

 

[Exophase]

This is a rediculous assertion. No one is making the claim that anyone is going to make 1500 insertions. It's a metric used to describe DURABILITY. Do you not understand that? If you went to a doctor and he said he'd do a procedure to save your life with a 1 in 1500 chance of death versus another doctor that could do the same procedure with a 1 in 10,000 chance in death which would you prefer? I'm merely using that as an example to illlustrate how the numbers can be used as a metric to describe the likelyhood of failure, or the durability of a product. You know like crash test ratings? Do I really have to explain this to you?

Like usual you don't have the first clue what you're talking about.


Insertion ratings mean one thing and one thing only: how many times you're (nearly) guaranteed to be able to remove the plug without damaging the connector. That's it. Not the likelihood of whether or not it'll fail every time you remove it. At work we often have to look at these ratings for connectors, and that's why (for critical, particularly flight hardware) we use connector savers and log every time we mate and demate to the original connector. If what you were saying were true we wouldn't care about reporting to the customer the number of insertions we've made.


The odds of it failing the first time you remove the connector are not 1/1500, they're close to nothing. The reason why it's rated 1/1500 is because each time you insert and remove the connector it adds mechanical stress which is cumulative. Your analogy is more like saying if the doctor estimates you'll live another 50 years that he's giving you a one in 50 shot of dying next year. Use your brain and stop making shit up.


And yes, what I said is obviously true, you're only calling USB mechanically flawed because you don't like that Binky said it about microUSB and are being a little bitch about it like you are about everything.

 

[vandyswa]

Of course the idea that people will want to insert and remove from their full USB ports more than 1500 times is silly

Um, I tether my device at night to a USB->Ethernet interface. I also plug in my keyboard/mouse when I set up at a Cafe to hack.


I've probably already cycled 100 times, so already at 1/15 of the usage cycles you're talking about. For me, it'd be nice if


the port wasn't falling apart in another 10-20 months!


Andy

 

[Exophase]

Of course the idea that people will want to insert and remove from their full USB ports more than 1500 times is silly

Um, I tether my device at night to a USB->Ethernet interface. I also plug in my keyboard/mouse when I set up at a Cafe to hack.


I've probably already cycled 100 times, so already at 1/15 of the usage cycles you're talking about. For me, it'd be nice if


the port wasn't falling apart in another 10-20 months!


Andy

Then use these:


http://www.l-com.com/item.aspx?id=11146


Full size USB mating durability is what it is (and is in your Pandora), that's a function of their design. But your usage are very much outlying and you can't expect them to cater to this.. that is, if you really do end up cycling the USB an average two times a day for all those months.

 

[FaeMinx]

Darn!


For the entire time I've had my Pandora (about 2.5 years)... I've been using the usb port constantly: Swapping out numerous usb flash drives, it seemed easier than swapping SD cards all the time. Now I have a 1Tb My Passport drive which I intended to be a constant companion to my Pandora.


Quite a few months ago I started having trouble getting some flash drives to read - and after experimentation it seems the connection isn't as secure as it once was. Now, when I use the USB port I secure whatever's plugged in with an elastic band.


This has concerned me - I had the intention of having my Pandora last indefinitely - certainly *at least* 10 -15 years. I had no idea the usb port was only designed to be used a paltry 1500 times!


Now the microUSB port on my HTC Sensation also gets used constantly - I've had it for 1.5 years and it usually has a cable plugged into it 2 - 4 times a day (I usb tether to whichever device/computer needs an internet connection)... I've found the connection to have become wobbly - I can easily move the cable from side to side. However, inspite of the physically 'loose' connection - the data connection never breaks.


On my Pandora, if I don't use an elastic band, the data connection will break with just a touch.


Would it be a big deal to have someone replace the USB port on my Pandora one of these days?


I *was* all gung ho for full size USB on the P2... But for someone who cycles the port on average 2-4 times a day, my vote now is for microUSB. ... I faaaaaaar prefer lifespan over the convenienve of not having to use an adaptor.

 

[thatgui]

My point was that sleek != cellphone and every device I listed can run linux distros such as SID, OpenWRT, Debian, Angstrom etc. So they have more in common with the pandora than you might think. There's game emu etc etc. In fact I am in the process of installing Debian onto my Pixi.

true, but most of our discussions here are about hardware features as I at least can't remember anyone writing "skip linux" and taking into account the rest of what you wrote ("pocketable, reduced formfactor, etc") => ??

Exactly. Just as no one is arguing for it to be unnecessarily large, no one is arguing for it to be so sleek as to skip features. That is the entire point. Yet people consistintly bring up sleekness when no one that I can find has even ASKED for it to be sleek in the first place. I have consistently stated I would not want to sacrifice functionality for example.

That solely depends on your definition of functionality, and there are enough posts on this board that indicate that there are differnences in peoples definition of it. I also don't see the need to argue pro sleekness as this is something that is more or less a goal as craig already laid out that sleeknes will be an important factor in the P2s design and a big part of the active members is involved in a desperate struggle to change craigs mind in details.

I can't state for certain but Craigix has said that he learned a lot from the first run and that things will be definitely smaller. For instance there is newer eMMC memory at 10nanometers with a read of 240mb/s that should drop in 2013 (write speed is still at 90 mb/s iirc. This means a very tiiiiny internal memory footprint). I expect smaller SoC's, microUSB/HDMI would help as well. The general trend is that electronic components get smaller over time with either an increase or consistency in power, speed, capacity etc. Evidence can be found everywhere and I'm not in a position to hazard a guess as to which components are going to be used in the P2. Look at all the Raspberry Pi/Gumstix spinoffs and copy cats for example. Now we have the possibility of 64 core parallel processing SoCs roughly the size of a credit card.

Looking at the current Pandoras boards I personally don't see where the Pandora could be made much sleeker (http://www.openpando...temid=7&lang=en).


Most of the things regarding SoC and such are already very small and won't get any smaller (at least not in a scale that matters) so making the P2 smaller will eventually lead to sacrificing functionality - if you see potential, please help me out (honestly) ! And don't forget the P2 is planned to have a SoC module so you will loose additional space in all three dimensions to accomodate this.