Made In China!

[puppydee]

Oh man, these have been a looooooooong time coming, I must admit they look pretty sweet. So what's gonna happen with the rest of the cases on order? Are we waiting to check them out when they arrive and give the green light to the rest? Will they be doing a 1000 at a time then shipping them? I guess I really want to know how long the other 3000 will take to ship? I'm really excited to FINALLY see some mass production action. I bet this is a little weight off your shoulders eh ed?

ps, if these questions have been answered in previous posts I'm sorry, I can't be bothered to read all the previous posts coz I'm knackered

 

[Dead1nside]

There isn't any accepting to do, these are the MP cases.

We just wanted the photos for a sort of insurance that they had built units.

The cases look fine to me. They've really improved since the last batch of photos we saw. I doubt they'll ever be able to do much better. They look good. Lets just get this show on the road.

 

[greendots]

Its not like they can't just purchase one... How does one reverse engineer a multilayer board like this anyway?

 

[Zotty]

Probably layer by layer. Hell they even do it with IC's, so a PCB should be relatively easy. But without all components it probably won't be useful.

 

[verm71]

Just by reading these forums and checking out the multiple pictures of the populated boards (especially the one where we all started discussing and identifying all the components), I'm sure a good reverse engineer doesn't need to work very hard.

 

[SNESFAN]

how long did this thing take to develop? Like 2-3 years or something? Wonder how long it would take to reverse engineer-> production.... we're probably talking quite a while before a bootlegged version would hit their market anyway.

That plus, if the market for these things aren't that big that it needs bootleggers to copy something that is sold relatively at cost to begin with... I'm not really sure there's much motivation there. The time and effort required to copy this wouldn't equal the profit for undercutting OP.

The official pandora was a product of love and hobbists, not to get rich. Those in the market for one of these wouldn't get a cheap knock off anyway. If anything, the pandora hits it really really big, you would see those imitating the form factor design, not the internal hardware. Look at the countless psp and iphone clones out there. None of them have the same internal specs the original has. Plus if you actually own one of these cheap knock offs, you know all you really bought was the image of something more popular, nothing about them are equal to or superior to the original. my 2 cents.

EDIT: main example, I have an Odroid, it's open everything, open schematics .... you don't see a million odroid clones running around. (I know the controls suck) But the hardware is decent, and it hasn't been copied and it's been out since last year.

 

[sold]

I have never said anything negative about the project before, but I am a bit concerned about the quality of the plastics. It looks cheap. Im sure it looks better in real life, but still. Made in China indeed.

 

[Wallydraigle]

I'm going to go all Emperor's New Clothes and say that I have to wonder if I'm seeing the same photos as every one else, because in the three pictures that I can see it looks like utter shit. I say this in all seriousness, I've seen people on benheck.com turn out cases which look way better than that in their garages just as a hobby, and for something which is being sold commercially, this really isn't acceptable. At least, I wouldn't accept that. I mean, I think the Pandora was an awesome idea and all, but if this is how it's going to end up after so long, I'm glad I didn't hand over any of my money. Hopefully the next batches will look a lot better.

 

[PhillipJ]

I guess the cases are a little rough but my Pandora is going to look much worse than that on the outside within a month or so of me getting it. The back of my phone was smooth glossy black, now has massive rough rub patches on it. My n810 has a massive scratch in the bezel and it's made of metal. They both still work though so meh. Function over form; as long as the case is tough enough to handle being thrown in a backpack or put in a pocket with my keys I don't care.

 

[quadomatic]

i think that is the point, function over form. Not just an excuse to "forgive" project mistakes, but if it is the best possible, i'll take it. People might ask me if I have waited 2 years for this ugly beast, i will proudly respond yes. Love is blind.

To quote Fabienne from Pulp Fiction: "It's unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same"

 

[kingoddball]

Many people who have posted today have paid and they are content to accept it.
I'm happy to accept it as is.

First Batchers are just excited to be able to hold it. As long as the case does not crumble over time, I will be happy.

 

[Ollonk]

If they ever make a case that is superbly better, I will just buy another. I want my Pandora NOW, I don't care how ugly/pretty it is, though buying another case would a slight waste of money, OP is almost, if not already, in the red on the first batch.

 

[quadomatic]

If they ever make a case that is superbly better, I will just buy another. I want my Pandora NOW, I don't care how ugly/pretty it is, though buying another case would a slight waste of money, OP is almost, if not already, in the red on the first batch.

OP is in the red for the first batch. They're losing money on every one. The second batch will be more expensive...

 

[SoleGrave]

I say send the little fuckers

Great news they look tight.

But I think a backside picture should be there as well since the last prototypes had the hinge cracks.

It does look nice, but I agree about the hinge suspicion.

 

[Azure]

I'm going to go all Emperor's New Clothes and say that I have to wonder if I'm seeing the same photos as every one else, because in the three pictures that I can see it looks like utter shit. I say this in all seriousness, I've seen people on benheck.com turn out cases which look way better than that in their garages just as a hobby, and for something which is being sold commercially, this really isn't acceptable. At least, I wouldn't accept that. I mean, I think the Pandora was an awesome idea and all, but if this is how it's going to end up after so long, I'm glad I didn't hand over any of my money. Hopefully the next batches will look a lot better.

You're not the only one that feels this way. It seems people's expectations have dropped over the course of this project (people have said that they no longer care how it looks, as long as it works they're happy). There is a little "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome going around (though people may not want to admit it...look at some of borgqueenx's recent posts about how super shiny and perfect this case is...I know he's relatively young, but I wonder if we're even looking at the same pictures...). I think a lot of other people are just tired of waiting, and this case is "acceptable." I'm still disappointed that this is the final product. No, I wasn't expecting anything fancy like an iPhone or DS. I knew it was going to be simple, non-shiny matte, but all of Craig's hype/excuses about how they are taking their time to tweak the case to make it perfect (and how to look at other major companies that rushed it and ended up with "flaws" to justify the delays) did not lead me to believe that this would be the final product (which appears to be much worse than the products of the companies that Craig was bashing...). Though my main gripe is really that lighter "square" on the lid...but like everybody else, I just want my Pandora as it has already missed over a year of use.

Obviously, this isn't a deal breaker as I'm not dumb enough to have waited this long and cancelled over aesthetics (so you can just stop there, Craig, with your auto-reply to any criticism at this stage in the project, "What's your order number?"). It's going to be a little embarrassing showing my finished Pandora to my friends (Nearly 18 months of delays and a "cheap"-looking case, no silkscreen, and the possibility of non-fully-functioning WiFi). At least it'll be a finished Pandora and OpenPandora Inc. can finally pass the torch to the community to finish the race.

 

[kingoddball]

It's always fun to see Azure's messages. (really, non sarcastic)

I enjoy them, I hoped for them earlier.
I do agree 100% with him, but I just want my damn Pandora!

 

[lulzfish]

You're not looking at the same pictures, I hacked a DNS server that borgqueenx uses to show lesbian porn instead of Pandora photos

 

[Iorgy77]

I thought it looked ugly from the initial renders. The cheap look of the plastics just adds to its boxy 80s laptop charm. I believe the plastic finish will look much better than those photos in real life though. Everytime someone who isnt a professional tries to take a photo of something black you can bet its going to look crap.

I would love to make a nice sandblasted aluminium shell for it but I doubt I can be bothered really.

Asthetics aside the only thing that bothers me is the keyboard looks like the keys are too low. What I mean by that is when you press a key it might be below the flat plastic and not flush or above the plastic.

 

[skeezix]

Peoples expectations differ. Remember how much mweston hated the rev3 proto case?

Well now that I have one, I think its pretty damned awesome. I'm as happy with it as anything else like a PSP ... ie: it hits my fancy just fine and is pretty well made. (And its a proto.. if the retail ones are a touch better, thats just great.)

But others demand utter perfection, like mweston and maybe Azure

So I think most will be happy with the case; a few will not be. Such is life, such as it always is. It could be better, but looks like the company borked it and not much OP can do about that one :/ ... but at least its pretty darned good

jeff

 

[Azure]

But others demand utter perfection, like mweston and maybe Azure

I really don't demand perfection (for example, my favorite handheld to this day is still the GP32, and I think we can agree that the GP32 had its fair share of flaws; I'm nowhere near cancelling my Pandora order based on aesthetics...but then again, I also didn't wait a year and a half to get my GP32). It's a possibility that it is just bad camera work (like Iorgy77 said above). Since I haven't had the pleasure of seeing a unit in person, my criticism is solely based on the pictures we've been provided thus far. All of this could be moot once I get my hands on a unit...but for now, color me with the current pictures.