Made In China!

[fischju2000]

Most of the pictures we've seen so far (from the factory) have been very close with the flash on, by a photographer that isn't any good, and apparently on units with a lot of dust or other particulates. In normal lighting conditions I'm sure it will look fine, as evidenced by the 'official' full case pictures. The white square on that back seems diminished in these as compared to the last ones, something the flash might bring out even more. It looks fine to me, just get them out already.

 

[Mjlink]

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

Ever since you said this thing looked good in plain black in an unfinished case, it had to be gangsta baller! I think everyone is freaking the F out on bad pics, until we have one of these in our hands, how can you gripe?

Peace & surf from Steamers Lane in Santa Cruz,

Link

 

[Budgie]

Someone point me in the direction of the 3d model of the case and I'll machine my own out of Ali and anodise it blue, then engrave it instead of silk screen

 

[bradleyb01]

The cases aren't beauty queens by any stretch of the imagination, but I am currently viewing this on my Lenovo W700 which is huge & black with a flat, rubbery finish on the top that shows every speck of dirt, dust and oil from my fingers. The guys from the company that I bought it from call it "The Beast" mainly due to it's looks, but with it's vPro Centrino 2 processor and 8 gigs of RAM it is a beast and it is by far the best laptop that I have ever owned and I am proud to show it off to anyone, oily finger prints included.

Case in point, the W700 is ugly as it gets on the outside, but it is beautiful where it counts, as I suspect the Pandora will be.

Actually, in comparing them right now, the Pandora is far better looking on the outside.

 

[aliking]

I suggest, for the sake of comparison, that anyone with a new PSP, DS or similar black device take a picture and post it up here so that we can compare apples to apples. I'd be curious to see if non-pro photography of other devices stands up to the scrutiny of the forum.

 

[gruso]

I don't think Azure's posts are unreasonable, but I'm hesitant to judge the finish on the latest pics. As Fischju points out, ED's photo shoot from a while back looked much better, and that was with an unfinished case. Then there's the battery lid we saw the other week:

Which clearly looks nicer than what we're seeing now. I think bad photography is playing a big part here. We'll see.

 

[Prometheus]

I suggest, for the sake of comparison, that anyone with a new PSP, DS or similar black device take a picture and post it up here so that we can compare apples to apples. I'd be curious to see if non-pro photography of other devices stands up to the scrutiny of the forum.

If you can give me a few minutes, I can get a picture up of my DSi.

 

[aliking]

Hey, all this talk reminded me of this video (check the date btw :blink: )

When I first saw that I thought:"God, that's beautiful. It looks like a fucking tank!"

I mean, look at it. It looks like it's going to eat the DS for a snack.

 

[Prometheus]

Ok, I got two photos taken. I'll put them in spoiler tags, as they're very large. My sincerest apologies to those on slower connections, but I didn't want to alter the size of what came off of my camera.

Spoiler

Spoiler

These were taken with a Fuji Finepix A500, with the macro mode and the flash (using its "Auto" setting) on. The DSi in the pictures is a few months old.

 

[kingoddball]

The DS looks flawless? Is it meant to? :huh:

 

[Tom`]

Prometheus: to me, the DS looks like it has a more matte finish - to be honest, I expected something more like this; the Pandora of Fatih's photos looks fairly shiny.

Of course, I'd been planning to order a Pandora since before I saw this:

Spoiler

So I can't say that looks have ever been a major concern. If they were, I would have given my money to Steve Jobs a long time ago. :lol:

 

[kingoddball]

That white Pandora is a butt ugly render. Sorry OP, but it's true :huh:

andora2ut4:

 

[gruso]

Hehe yeah, early days. That picture was my introduction to Pandora, it blew my mind. Kinda puts the current aesthetic concerns into perspective.

 

[kingoddball]

Hahahaha!

I remember seeing those renders, too.

I only ordered in November 09, but was always watching and lingering since GP2X days. (Never needed to post a question as pretty much everything was already asked and answered about GP2X)


Edit:

The white square has always been around the Pandora Logo anyhow.. I'm sure it was when x68000 went and seen Craig and his Pandora.
Have a look - the square is there. Photography seems to make no difference.

Spoiler

This is most likely not news to all you savvy posters - I just never actually noticed it on older images.

 

[hch]

Prometheus: to me, the DS looks like it has a more matte finish - to be honest, I expected something more like this; the Pandora of Fatih's photos looks fairly shiny.

Of course, I'd been planning to order a Pandora since before I saw this:

Spoiler

So I can't say that looks have ever been a major concern. If they were, I would have given my money to Steve Jobs a long time ago. :lol:

oh, this is so beautiful! especially the keyboard. it's almost the chicklet style that is so super fashionable nowadays.

so sad they went for black and rounded keys.

so, yeah, tastes do differ.

 

[zhasha]

Prometheus: to me, the DS looks like it has a more matte finish - to be honest, I expected something more like this; the Pandora of Fatih's photos looks fairly shiny.

Of course, I'd been planning to order a Pandora since before I saw this:

Spoiler

So I can't say that looks have ever been a major concern. If they were, I would have given my money to Steve Jobs a long time ago. :lol:

So did anyone else notice that it's a QWERTY keyboard but someone was looking at a German QWERTZ keyboard when writing the button captions? IE. It has 2 Y buttons

EDIT:
Confirmed: Pandora has 2 Y keys

 

[taylor-madeak]

Guys, you all complain too much. You complain it's taking too long, that there are too many delays. You complain that there won't be any silkscreen on the finished cases. Now you're complaining about a hump on the back of the lid?

Good heavens! It's a real live Pandora! This thing is really happening! Why complain now about the result of DaveC's case design?

Yes, this isn't the Chinese plastic factory's fault. It's a direct result of the design of the Pandora's core hardware, a design that most of you guys had a hand in finalizing!

You (this community) wanted the entire unit to be as small as possible. Done. They had to offload some of the circuitry to a daughter card to make the mainboard PCB smaller, but hey it worked!

You wanted stereo speakers. Done. Hey, speakers aren't that big and even the DS has two of them, right? Logical place to put them is either side of the screen.

You wanted the largest touchscreen possible, allowing for the two above conditions to be met. Done. This leaves only one place for that daughter card: behind the LCD.

You wanted, naturally, to have a cool Pandora box logo prominently displayed somewhere on the case. Done. Not an unreasonable request, everything else has that. The logical place would be the center of the back of the lid, so that it would be easily and prominently visible even when the device is closed.

As thin as it is, the daughter card PCB still needed to be accommodated in the case design. To fit it behind that LCD, that part of the case needed to have a slight indentation in it. Think about that: to form that indentation and the Pandora box logo, those things had to be represented in negative in the mold. This means a raised area on the bottom of the mold pressing into a depression on the top of the mold, which - no matter what - will result in a hump on the outside of that piece. It's elementary physics, and there's no way to prevent it without completely redesigning the Pandora.

Devices like the NDS, PSP, iPhone, etc. ad nauseum don't have this problem because they're made by experienced manufacturers who know about this particular pitfall and can instruct their engineers to avoid it.

This is a community sponsored, designed, and produced device. No matter what you do, you can't escape the fact that - because it's the Pandora team's first attempt at such a device - it's an amateur effort. If it's really that much of an eyesore to you, make a skin for the damn thing so you don't have to look at it! If you don't want to skin it, then accept that this is a natural consequence of the design of the device and, in spite of what others consider to be a "flaw," it's a damn cool and fantastic-looking device.

Nothing else out there has the sheer number and specific mix of features that are crammed into this device. That right there makes it worth owning: damn few people you know are likely to have one. Everybody and their bloody dog has a $E#%^@$#ing iPhone/iPod Touch. Let the sheep keep their DRM, I'll take a Pandora.

tl;dr: The hump on the back of the Pandora is a result of the hardware and case design, and it's not going away without starting over completely from scratch (at least with a new mold). Kwitcherbitchin'.

Edit: Sorry about the rant. It just feels to me like there's way too much "wah my pussy hurts!" and not enough "sweet, my Pandora's coming soon!" in this forum lately. Show the devs (even Craig!) some appreciation, they are after all making this thing happen out of their own blood, sweat, and tears.

 

[bodhee]

Thats pretty funny "WAAAAHHHH MYYY PUUSSYYY HUURTSSS"

 

[Budgie]

make a skin for the damn thing so you don't have to look at it!

that's why I would like the 3d model, so I can change it, or is that part of the pandora not open?

 

[kingoddball]

ED Released the 3D model not long ago.
Someone here may have the link - If not, I think I have the files somewhere around.
Blender Files I believe.