I Got My Pandora


I got mine a week or so ago. Still enjoying it. Had to maually fix the L button but its all good now. Hinge has loosened up and I hope it doesnt get any looser!

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Also a video I made: http://vimeo.com/19143154
 
Got mine on Friday. I didn't want to post an impression right away cause these tend to overly positive.

So now after playing with it for a few days my verdict is:

The hardware is really good! Not perfect but way better than my PSP, WIZ or GP2X. I was a bit surprised to be honest as I thought it would feel more 'homemade' but it feels really sturdy and well built.
My L trigger wasn't working so I had to open it up and position that little rubber thingy right. My hinge is tight enough so I can position the screen in any angle I want.

The d-pad and buttons I would say is superb. I actually think they rival those on the NDS. Both in feel and position. Thanks DaveC!
Haven't used the nubs much(a bit quake 2) and they work well. They aren't as good as the thumbsticks on say a dualshock but they easily beat the psp nub. I must say it feels great to be able to play an FPS on a handheld without feeling handicapped.

The screen is nice. It does have a bit ghosting(nowhere near the level of the psp though). Changing the gamma settings to CRT TV seem to avert a lot of the ghosting for some reason. This was the thing I was most worried about but I can honestly say that I am completely satisfied with it.

Another thing I was pleasantly surprised about was the keyboard. It may be because I am used to the onscreen keyboard on my HTC Hero, but I find it very easy and fast to type on and the keys have a nice feel to them.

I wont go into software because I thinks is a bit irrelevant for now. It can (and will!) always improve. We just need more units out there I think.
But it does the job. A bit rough around the edges. A bit buggy here and there, nothing mayor though. I should note that I have only used xfce not minimenu.
A lot of the emus I tried actually worked great!

Overall I am more than satisfied. It was easily worth the money and the (2 months :p )wait. It is without a doubt the coolest gadget I have ever owned! I am still amazed that it actually is a little mini computer not just a handheld gaming device.
 
Yes I finally got my Pandora and my god was it worth the wait. The build quality simple amazes me. The screen and the finish of the System software. Kudos to all the people involved.

I did run into problems with corrupting files on a 32Gb SD-Card which had problems under the FAT32 file system but I formatted it in NTSC on the PC and installed the Codecs.pnd file that opens up NTFS file support. Not had a problem since.


Pandora's Sack

Pandora's (un)Box(ing)

I'm one happy camper and opening Pandora's bucks didn't bring me any Catastrophe.... yet....! LOL
 
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Just got mine, no problems with build quality. Very small scuff on the top but its hardly noticable. Installed the latest RC firmware and been giving N64 roms a go. Going to give a whole bunch of other games a go as well :D
 
Got mine about a week ago - it rocks! One screw was missing... and some others were overtightened... and I had to fix the right shoulder button and it's still not optimal... but those are my only complaints. Screen is great, controls are awesome, battery lasts forever, and the PND system is quite easy. I've loaded it with a bunch of goodies, and all my friends are jealous!
 
I have had my Pandora for 4 days now & its just amazing. Great little piece of hardware. The plastics are a little on the cheap side, but its solid overall. The screen is just beautiful & the controls/keyboard are spot on. Software is a little quirky... but works & will continue to be improved. I have several of the emulators working excellent (N64, PSX, Mame, Mega Drive, PC engine, Nes/SNES) game boy advance is lacking... but overall its a really nice machine. Using the wifi when sitting on the couch to hit facebook & google news & works perfect. A very very nice machine overall. I am looking forward to more of them getting out in the wild and seeing the software mature.

I may even order a 2nd one :-D
 
I've got my Pandora yesterday. Left trigger was deeply "dug" in the case. I tried to remove screws to see if I could fix it. One screw still refuses to be removed :/. Gosh, there are some serious issue with assembling people. So I was just be able to "un-dig" the left trigger with no assurance that it works and no possibility to open the case to be sure everything else is okay. How can I test it works ? It seems there is no buttons check program delivered with Pandora.

Apart from that, it is a nice machine.
 
Gruso said:
^
Code:
#op_test_inputs
I think a GUI version will be in a future hotfix. :)

there's one in hotfix 5 rc1 ... xfce pandora button>system>pandora input-tester
 
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Got my Pandora yesterday 07/03/2011 (ehmmm Premium :) ) and i'm very happy this is a nice machine.
Mine seems near perfect, all button working, case is well assembled, very good screen, Wifi work.
Just updated to HF_5.
So for now im playing with some emus... :) :)
 
So, I got mine when I got home last night and figured I'd post my first impressions:

There were two items that weren't quite right out of the box, but were easy enough to remedy:

The case towards the rear was gaping a little. So I opened the input checker app and while ensuring I still had operational shoulder buttons, tightened the screws. All fine now.

The right SD card slot didn't seem to want to eject after I put the card in. If felt as if it was scraping when I inserted it and when trying to push the card to eject it, it just wasn't moving at all. Anyway, I persevered and found that if I pushed the card on the left hand corner, it ejected. I inserted and ejected a few more times and it seems that it's no longer an issue wherever I push the card.

Initial impressions of the OS were that I struggled to get to grips with navigating my way round. Was I just over excited? I tell you though, stick with it and if all else fails: stop, take a deep breath, AND THEN REMEBER THAT IT'S GOT A TOUCH SCREEN AND YOU DON'T NEED TO USE THE NUBS!!!! Fool.

On that subject though, the stylus was VERY stiff to extract, but again, in and out a few times and it becomes much smoother.

I've not run much in termas of software yet, but when I have I'll post again with my views.

But my advice to you guys who are still waiting, hang in there and I'm sure you won't regret it.
 
Sugarfix said:
The case towards the rear was gaping a little. So I opened the input checker app and while ensuring I still had operational shoulder buttons, tightened the screws.

I did the opposite and loosened all mine by about a half turn when I got it, better a little gap if you can live with it than risk any cracks.
 
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I got my Pandora on Monday, so I've been fooling around with it for roughly 6 days now. Bottom line is: I LOVE IT. The d-pad and buttons are great and I think the keyboard is FANTASTIC. Big enough for typing fast with your thumbs but to big and definitely not to small as the keyboard on the n900 (but that is a phone). The numbs are good and I like the idea of using the one numb as a mouse pointer and the other numb to left and right click. But it takes some time to get used to though. My right numb seems to have bit of friction, like it almost gets stuck in a corner or at least rubs up against one.
 
I really love seeing the 2008 forum people getting their units :)

That nub symptom has been reported by a couple of people, apparently the disc of the nub is just hitting the circular cutout of the case on some units. They say you can try pressing the case down in that area, say with a thumb on each side.
 
fettouhi said:
My right numb seems to have bit of friction, like it almost gets stuck in a corner or at least rubs up against one.

Just push the case around the nub down a bit, that fixes it :)
 
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^ I haven't had this happen with my unit, but would a fair description of this technique be "Like pushing Lego bricks together"? :p
 
EvilDragon said:
fettouhi said:
My right numb seems to have bit of friction, like it almost gets stuck in a corner or at least rubs up against one.

Just push the case around the nub down a bit, that fixes it :)

Yeah, that seemed to have helped :D.
 
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Last week I finally got my pandora. I'm a classic first batcher with an order date from 2008, don't know my order#.

First look: very impressive device, given that a bunch of clever enthusiasts made this possible using a next to nothing funding. Please don't stab me on "1 mio. eur is not nothing", but some people seem to forget that the initial funding was not for research but for production of their devices.

The case feels a bit cheap, but not cheaper than a samsung notebook I just bought last month. But way cheaper than the macbook, but to be fair: it is way cheaper than the macbook!

First boot was a bit discouraging as the installed software covers all aspects of linux (in tons of small apps) but I missed a bit of preinstalled fun. To be fair again: I had the same feeling with the first hours of my ipod touch before I found "plants vs zombies" :)

But once connected to my wlan and using the pndshop, the sd card (2gb) was filled quickly with very impressive apps and emus; by that the pandora finally became really mine.

Most impressive was xbmc, which gave me a very good interface to grooveshark, which the native grooveshark app didn't. But the streaming of music through grooveshark was interrupted too often due to wifi bandwidth, a problem that I don't have using my macbook. But for organizing local music and videos, xbmc seems the most advanced platform to me with a very good connection to further information on your mp3 collection. On the other hand, the performance of pandora at 700mhz seems just a bit too slow for a slick xbmc-ui performance, some times I was stuck because I'm not familiar with all the shortcuts xbmc uses.

A bug in the file manager that refuses to dive into the second directory level when using detailed view was very irritating at first, but is not pandora-specific but angstrom-specific. Switching to list or icon view helps a lot...

A "open ipod" menu entry in mplayer gave me hope for connecting my ipod touch to it, but there seems to be a huge difference in connecting ios4 devices via usb compares to ipod nano/classic etc. No jailbreak, no ipod touch -> pandora connectivity(correct me if i'm wrong).

Emulators are fun once the roms are in place, I like n64 supermario64 and mariokart64; but also classic psx roms like tekken 2, croc and spyro. Mame is a must have in order to impress your friends "look, an original pacman", the same goes for quake + descent in all its flavours.

As a newbie, I needed some time to get used to when the psx control buttons are used (psx, n64) and when the keyboard layout is needed (descent, quake). I still try to figure out the most suitable control config for me, but the performance of the native apps is really really impressive.

Connecting usb memory sticks and usb hdd made to problems, by this I had the whole rom collection available at once.

Final conclusion:
Given what I expected at order date 2008, the pandora is way better than I expected. Given what is available today, pandora has a hard time being of use for casual gamers favoring ipad&co. But compared to "atari classics" on ipad/iphone, the pandora is definitely the better suited machine for retro gaming. Finding the critical mass of users to be attractive for developers seems to be quite impossible as of today, but as the best mobile device for cross compiling linux games and apps it can find its users, which I really really hope!

regards,
grobi
 
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