My Pandora Review

[DrCJBoduma]

...About 100 Pandoras are out there,...

I'm little confused about total amount of Pandoras shiped out (reading about 100 out from sunday, but not sure if it mean 100 per day or total). Can You (or other OPT member) post (tweet) total all Pandoras done every evening or so? Pretty please We (I guess that whole community) appreciate some kind of progress bar (counter ).

+1,000,000

same (-999,999)

 

[Caine]

Pretty much the review I expected to write myself. The weakest points (poor case quality and horribly unusable keyboard layout (IMNSHO)) were expected.

Luckily, we can fix the keyboard layout. During our keyboard designs (which I think were mainly ignored), I paid special attention to staying close to known and widely accepted keyboard layouts such that existing keyboard bindings remain usable.

ED has chosen differently, based on ---for me, wrongly--- perceived usage frequencies. As a consequence, many applications and shortcuts have to be altered (e.g. alt+window drag has changed to shift+window drag). If you use a lot of shortcut intensive applications, this means that you have to learn two sets of keybindings when adhering to the chosen layout.

The first thing I will do is change the keyboard mapping and fix what I see as the biggest atrocity of the Pandora. I never look at my keys anyway. I'm a bit sad though, that after half a year of delays the case is still of poor quality.

My apologies if this is worded a bit harsh, this is just important to me. I'm actually looking forward to the Pandora very much.

 

[BackAssward]

To be fair, it's a little early to talk about percentages for defective units. Not just because the sample size is so small, but also because... 'defective on arrival' and 'defective during the warranty period' are two different things. I doubt that those 20 returns of the GP2X out of 200, were all defective on arrival. Some must have gone defective and returned during their early lifetime.

I am not saying I expect a large percentage of Pandoras to go defective, just saying it is way to low a number and way to early to make any sort of call. It might be good PR to say such things, but not entirely realistic and a bit premature.

 

[matzesu]

2% of failure rate are 80 Units, thats alot!!!, hope you get it to 0%, because one unit costs 300€ ...

 

[Arkay Firestar]

People are being exceedingly unrealistic about the realities of this project. There will be defective units. It seems as though OPT will be quick to address them, which is commendable, and it does seem as though they're spending even more time QC'ing now than they were when they shipped the first units out.

People asking about "oh, will case quality improve" or "will there be defects at 3xxx" need to abandon the expectation of perfection. People can be incredibly OCD about electronics sometimes (I'm one of them), but I'm also a realist. I understand the nature of this project, and I'm expecting little defects here and there. I just want a consistent looking screen, a battery that works as advertised, and a case that doesn't creak/flex excessively when I use the system. Oh, and buttons that all register, even if they feel weird. Anything else is gravy.

 

[PokeParadox]

To be fair, it's a little early to talk about percentages for defective units. Not just because the sample size is so small, but also because... 'defective on arrival' and 'defective during the warranty period' are two different things. I doubt that those 20 returns of the GP2X out of 200, were all defective on arrival. Some must have gone defective and returned during their early lifetime.

I am not saying I expect a large percentage of Pandoras to go defective, just saying it is way to low a number and way to early to make any sort of call. It might be good PR to say such things, but not entirely realistic and a bit premature.

There were a lot of problems with first edition GP2Xs... I don't doubt that some were DoA.

 

[trapef]

I expect I'm like most excited preorderers, (soon-to-be-pandorians) and appreciate all the efforts hard work which has been put in by all contributors, and accept there will be some niggles.
Any clues as to when the rest of batch 1 will be made? Are all parts in production? Will assembly line be similar and thus quality as good?

Great reviews so far, hopefully more to follow.

 

[pawprints]

Personally I'm really happy with the build quality and if I'm honest it's much better than I was expecting.

Does anyone have a jpeg of the keyboard layout (not photo) as I'd love to memories the keys off a screen rather than the keyboard.

The L and R buttons were fine but they just felt a little different to each other with the right one being a little more clicky but this isn't an issue. The keyboard is nice and it feels a little weird at first compared to a normal keyboard but you soon get used to it and type without thinking. I think it's much like the spectrum keyboard in that you have to memories what each key does. Oh and the nubs... they are NICE!. Again much more comfortable than my PSP1 Nub.

The screen is crystal clear and I didn't notice any ghosting which I think is really important when you I compare it to the blur that is the origional psp.

If I'm honest (and this might have been because I am the 1%) the power slider felt a little weird and I guess this could also be hindered because I bite my nails.

LOL Spending so much time with the DS at work my finger instinctively reaches for the right of the unit to turn it on. Not a criticism at all but probably looks odd me doing it. I’ll let you know how it sounds through headphones but the sound through the speakers is fine for playing games and watching videos.

The desktop is nice and clear and the PND system seems to work well and is really easy once you know what you’re doing. Personally I wish it would appear as a mass storage device when you first boot so you can plug it into the PC and use it as a card reader but that’s just a personal preference. I must admit I found some things a little confusing and you can feel a little lost at first in some areas but that’s like anything.

As for the OP team they’ve been great in helping me resolve my technical issues with my Pandora and with Debs and Jacquelyn (sorry If I’ve not spelt that right) you are in safe hands should you experience any problems. Plus you’ve got lots of kid and helpful devs on hand to help out.

As I’ve said before for me it’s everything I was hoping for and I look forward to spending many hours playing with the Pandora 

 

[Arkay Firestar]

Personally I'm really happy with the build quality and if I'm honest it's much better than I was expecting.

Does anyone have a jpeg of the keyboard layout (not photo) as I'd love to memories the keys off a screen rather than the keyboard.

The L and R buttons were fine but they just felt a little different to each other with the right one being a little more clicky but this isn't an issue. The keyboard is nice and it feels a little weird at first compared to a normal keyboard but you soon get used to it and type without thinking. I think it's much like the spectrum keyboard in that you have to memories what each key does. Oh and the nubs... they are NICE!. Again much more comfortable than my PSP1 Nub.

The screen is crystal clear and I didn't notice any ghosting which I think is really important when you I compare it to the blur that is the origional psp.

If I'm honest (and this might have been because I am the 1%) the power slider felt a little weird and I guess this could also be hindered because I bite my nails.

LOL Spending so much time with the DS at work my finger instinctively reaches for the right of the unit to turn it on. Not a criticism at all but probably looks odd me doing it. I’ll let you know how it sounds through headphones but the sound through the speakers is fine for playing games and watching videos.

The desktop is nice and clear and the PND system seems to work well and is really easy once you know what you’re doing. Personally I wish it would appear as a mass storage device when you first boot so you can plug it into the PC and use it as a card reader but that’s just a personal preference. I must admit I found some things a little confusing and you can feel a little lost at first in some areas but that’s like anything.

As for the OP team they’ve been great in helping me resolve my technical issues with my Pandora and with Debs and Jacquelyn (sorry If I’ve not spelt that right) you are in safe hands should you experience any problems. Plus you’ve got lots of kid and helpful devs on hand to help out.

As I’ve said before for me it’s everything I was hoping for and I look forward to spending many hours playing with the Pandora 

Did they already replace your unit? Or are you referring to your impression of when you had it? Or did you get it working, finally?

 

[EvilDragon]

ED has chosen differently, based on ---for me, wrongly--- perceived usage frequencies.

It wasn't me. We decided that together - and we're all happy. I've been using it for four months.

As a consequence, many applications and shortcuts have to be altered (e.g. alt+window drag has changed to shift+window drag). If you use a lot of shortcut intensive applications, this means that you have to learn two sets of keybindings when adhering to the chosen layout.

Well - you can put that back to Alt if you want. It's an XFCE4 setting.

2% of failure rate are 80 Units, thats alot!!!, hope you get it to 0%, because one unit costs 300€ ...

That's normal, you can't do much about that. But it's not 300 EUR. Most of the times, only small things fail. The LCD cable, for example. Or the battery. Those can be replaced, no need to produce a completely new unit.
Even if the board itself fails, a reflow fixes it most of the times.
And if that also fails, you can remove the expensive parts (like the OMAP, etc.) and put them on a new board.

 

[pawprints]

Personally I'm really happy with the build quality and if I'm honest it's much better than I was expecting.

Does anyone have a jpeg of the keyboard layout (not photo) as I'd love to memories the keys off a screen rather than the keyboard.

The L and R buttons were fine but they just felt a little different to each other with the right one being a little more clicky but this isn't an issue. The keyboard is nice and it feels a little weird at first compared to a normal keyboard but you soon get used to it and type without thinking. I think it's much like the spectrum keyboard in that you have to memories what each key does. Oh and the nubs... they are NICE!. Again much more comfortable than my PSP1 Nub.

The screen is crystal clear and I didn't notice any ghosting which I think is really important when you I compare it to the blur that is the origional psp.

If I'm honest (and this might have been because I am the 1%) the power slider felt a little weird and I guess this could also be hindered because I bite my nails.

LOL Spending so much time with the DS at work my finger instinctively reaches for the right of the unit to turn it on. Not a criticism at all but probably looks odd me doing it. I’ll let you know how it sounds through headphones but the sound through the speakers is fine for playing games and watching videos.

The desktop is nice and clear and the PND system seems to work well and is really easy once you know what you’re doing. Personally I wish it would appear as a mass storage device when you first boot so you can plug it into the PC and use it as a card reader but that’s just a personal preference. I must admit I found some things a little confusing and you can feel a little lost at first in some areas but that’s like anything.

As for the OP team they’ve been great in helping me resolve my technical issues with my Pandora and with Debs and Jacquelyn (sorry If I’ve not spelt that right) you are in safe hands should you experience any problems. Plus you’ve got lots of kid and helpful devs on hand to help out.

As I’ve said before for me it’s everything I was hoping for and I look forward to spending many hours playing with the Pandora 

Did they already replace your unit? Or are you referring to your impression of when you had it? Or did you get it working, finally?

My new one is on route and as the battery had gone too it made sense to get it replaced

The cool thing is you get help from the people who designed the unit and software. That's pretty rare and I think is really cool and a really positive part of the whole experience.

 

[Pleng]

People are being exceedingly unrealistic about the realities of this project. There will be defective units.

To be fair OP set themselves up for this level of criticism by consistently saying that it was being delayed in order to make the device perfect. I remember that Craig once said we could have had the Pandoras in June last year (this was about September) but there would have been problems. I remember one of the tweaks that they made was raising the dpad because otherwise it would cause pains after a couple of hours (!) of use.

Well one of the flaws of my Pandora is that the down direction on the d-pad doesn't register unless its pressed pretty firmly, a lot firmer than the other directions. The A and Y buttons cause quite a lot of friction against the shell, and the shoulder buttons also feel pretty inconsistent. It's nothing that bothers me in particular; it's about what I realistically expected from the system. I can, however, understand why some people who are more particular about these things would be upset after 2 years of promises of perfection from the Pandora team.

Anyway, these minor issues aside, I'm dead chuffed with mine. The nubs move super smoothly and have just the right amount of resistance. They feel exactly how the Saturn's analogue controller SHOULD have felt! The keyboard is a joy to use, and you get used to the layout pretty quickly. I was really skeptical of using the second nub for left/right mouse clicks but it works brilliantly, much better than using the shoulder buttons could ever have been.

I have had a good play with Dosbox, a little go on Snex9x (super mario world has some glitch graphics, but fzero worked perfectly!) and watched an episode of South Park using gnome MPlayer.

I can't wait for the appstore to start filling up with new games and emulators

My house did NOT have its spring clean as was previously planned today!

 

[BackAssward]

There were a lot of problems with first edition GP2Xs... I don't doubt that some were DoA.

Oh, I have no doubt of that either... if you look at my post, I wasn't denying that.

I doubt that those 20 returns of the GP2X out of 200, were all defective on arrival.

My point was simple. It is way to early to gage overall percentage of defectives for 2 reasons: Such a small percentage of them are in the wild. They have been out there way to short of a time to make any logical conclusions.

Hell, it might be less than 2% when all is said and done. It's just way to early to make *any* conclusions. For someone to make one now, is just silly and possibly PR, since it is in no way a realistic thing to do yet.

 

[VRAndy]

Many units are still in the hands of UPS, who probably have not been testing the unit's wifi capabilities.

 

[Creature XL]

I know you keep getting asked for a count - well it's just because I am now in 900-1000 range

Did you forgot again that Craig does not have 1000 Ps?
Ed takes 200 or so with him. So every "Craig-position" after 800 is no no

 

[bustaballs]

Hey, as long as the failure rate is below 50%, they are doing better than the 360.

 

[antheus123]

Plengs review of the gaming controls dpad and shoulder buttons make me think waiting for this thing has been a complete waste of time :angry:

 

[skeezix]

eh? I think he said the dpad was good.

IMHO, the dpad is great. DaveC designed it, so you know it has to be pretty great

Shoulders are fine for me .. they are differently wobbly on my prototype, but they work nicely. I'm easier going than most -- functional makes me happy

From my prototype, I actually really like the design; my old wishes was that it was a tiny bit smaller .. maybe shave off a quarter-inch width, and eight-inch height, and it'd be damned near perfect. But itds already cramped as hell, so such is life

jeff

 

[(naw)mcx]

Plengs review of the gaming controls dpad and shoulder buttons make me think waiting for this thing has been a complete waste of time :angry:

Dear god, one person's Pandora has some slight flaws.


WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP NOW!

 

[Arkay Firestar]

Plengs review of the gaming controls dpad and shoulder buttons make me think waiting for this thing has been a complete waste of time :angry:

This is kind of what I posted about earlier. There are going to be unresponsive/iffy controls. I suggested that OPT test a unit extensively, 5-10min+, and I was derided. People wanted everything quickly. Guess what: now people want them to test everything. Of course there will be mushy buttons or unresponsive controls. Unless every unit is booted into something that uses the d-pad/nubs/buttons and everything is tested, it is very possible. Microsoft ships every 360 controller with a defective d-pad, so why would anyone assume there is no chance for problems here.

All that said, I'm actually pleased so far with the first reports of the system, and more importantly, how people like pawprints were taken care of when their system exhibited a serious issue. In the end, that's all I can ask for from a super small company with very limited resources.

I strongly suspect that the next 3000 will be a long time in the coming. Not only will they probably tweak the cases a bit more, but Mweston and ED can't stay in the UK forever, and even if they're replaced with meat on the lines (and obviously we won't need MWeston's skills for the Wi-fi fix after all those boards are shipped), things will probably slow down a bit. As long as they do things right and do right by their customers, I don't have any complaints. Well, getting it this year would be nice.