Is A Keyboard Necessary?

[Mr B]

Where? It's always been a clamshell. I can post mockups from March if you like.
No no, no need, I'll believe ya. And I'll also take that as my rudeness has been forgiven straight ahead.
Edit: (Also, the statement that it would have a slide out keyboard, and not a clamshell design, was in the design thread, or the info drop thread, but i cant find the threads, and as such much less quote the actual info.) /Edit

It's a shame you didn't just tell everybody you had decided on a clamshell at that point as opposed to asking for design plans and ideas.

Had I known the basic design months ago, myself and many more would probably be happy with the design and not dissappointed because our design hopes have been dashed. (For me the only thing I'm pissed off about is that DS or PC type controls are now out of the question for FPS games).
I would have to agree entirely here. If the design has been set since march, asking for designs in the first place is just plain stup... No wait, i got away with being rude once, but there has to be a limit. I'll try in a different way. Asking for design suggestions when a design is already decided on, isn't exactly well thought out.

And when pretty much everyone drew anything but clamshell, there should perhaps had been a clarification at once saying "sorry guys this WILL have a clamshell design." That, or... suggest to the makers that a second design might be worthwhile to develop, and sell. If the later would be true, it would be a smart move to go "we will go with what we have first, and develop a differently designed unit after, simply due to cost restraints. The hardware will, as long as possible be identical" There would probably have to be a bit of smart programing to make a onscreen keyboard appear to software running on the device as the hardware onboard one, but just going with a guess here, both would be USB connected, and a bit of creative driver making would make the onscreen one work just as well. (Not saying that it necessary would have to have one of those, just saying that is is possible.)
B!

 

[craigix]

We didn't want to say anything which might effect the design ideas. If someone had come up with something radical we were certainly open to changing our design, and we have taken several suggestions from those designs, dual analogue, dual SD, USB host, real Dpad, touch screen, LEDs for activity etc. and still are (moving SD to the front for example).

By showing the original design and the semi-final one you can see just how much we did change after the long pandora thread. We will post these sometime soon.

 

[sparr]

I would like to see pandora with a detachable keyboard/cover. Without the keyboard *accessory*, the device would look a lot like a psp/gp2x/etc. The keyboard could attach to the bottom of the device for typing, or covering the device as a cover. This seems like the best of both worlds to me, devs and non-gamers get a mini-laptop, gamers get a mega-gp2x.

 

[Shiny]

By showing the original design and the semi-final one you can see just how much we did change after the long pandora thread. We will post these sometime soon.

Awesome It's not every day that you get to see the evolution of a handheld in such a way.

 

[Ayla]

I would like to see pandora with a detachable keyboard/cover. Without the keyboard *accessory*, the device would look a lot like a psp/gp2x/etc. The keyboard could attach to the bottom of the device for typing, or covering the device as a cover. This seems like the best of both worlds to me, devs and non-gamers get a mini-laptop, gamers get a mega-gp2x.

+1.
This is a good idea.

 

[b._.o._.b]

I would like to see pandora with a detachable keyboard/cover. Without the keyboard *accessory*, the device would look a lot like a psp/gp2x/etc. The keyboard could attach to the bottom of the device for typing, or covering the device as a cover. This seems like the best of both worlds to me, devs and non-gamers get a mini-laptop, gamers get a mega-gp2x.

+1.
This is a good idea.

-1 I don't like anything detachable (see myself searching hours for the keyboard)

 

[Yrx]

By showing the original design and the semi-final one you can see just how much we did change after the long pandora thread. We will post these sometime soon.

This would be cool, I'd love to see it.

 

[Exophase]

We didn't want to say anything which might effect the design ideas. If someone had come up with something radical we were certainly open to changing our design, and we have taken several suggestions from those designs, dual analogue, dual SD, USB host, real Dpad, touch screen, LEDs for activity etc. and still are (moving SD to the front for example).

By showing the original design and the semi-final one you can see just how much we did change after the long pandora thread. We will post these sometime soon.

I would have greatly preferred it if you actually openly said why a design wasn't going to be used instead of just letting all kinds of hype build around it. At the very least for the popular ones like DaveC's. What would have been so bad about that? You still haven't really come forward to say why you guys chose this particular design and why other ones won't work. So what it looks like to everyone is that you're just ignoring them, even if you aren't actually.