My satisfaction with the Pandora after owning it for 2 years now

[porg]

1) Due to internal wifi issues I have to use an external wifi adapter, which brings several disadvantages:

• costs's you some extra money (only ~10-20 EUR, but still)
• consumes more power compared to internal wifi
• protrudes from the case, that shape can hinder pocket fitting
• and it even consumes power if usb host is disabled
  so in order to prevent it 100% from sucking power, you must unplug it and carry it separately, and not loose that tiny piece —> even less comfortable!

2) And, as I am already ranting: Another basic feature: charging my Pandora unattended to full load never works! Always find it at around 60-80%, instead of 100%, or at least near 100%. sysinfo logs proof it. Plus WizardStan admits the design errors of the charging circuitry in the linked post. Must stand nearby my Pandora and stop it if it reaches an acceptably load, or if it has a unsatisfying load, trigger charging manually again (opening lid sometimes is enough, sometimes needs power un/re-plugging).

3) Industrial design: The ergonomy of the case & controls have its issues. The combination of being quite heavy (battery!) & corners too sharp (not rounded enough), hurting your palm mussles in certain angles quite soon (5-10min). I cannot play to long without getting cramps in my hands. The position in which I can play more than 45min is if I lay on my belly, neck bend up, and looking forward & slightly down on my pandora or in upright sitting position. In that position the feeling in the hands is quite ok. Laying on the sofa, no chance, getting pain in my palms after 10min.

Summary: Pandora is a bloody time consuming device. Many worries. I could say to myself: Love it as an outstanding device, its truly extraordinary features such as super long battery run time, super controls, superb audio, quite hi def screen, emulators, retro ports, some few qualitative original games, community experience, etc — but on the other side, I cannot rest in peace until the basic hardware and software features are implemented, and after many years it is still a lousy standard honestly, almost every no-name electronic company has better working products.

I am dedicating so much time to the Pandora, testing/reporting, composing interaction design ideas, etc… but it all seems like an endless pile of work, too few active people. I believe more and more in commercially organised products & services. After actively participating in the FLOSS community for years, eventually the OpenPandora experiences really dampened my hopes and beliefs into FLOSS. It is possible only for certain ventures and a critical mass is necessary.

Maybe I should focus more on the OP achievements (what works good or in some cases even excellent so far!) and judge the issues mildly according to the circumstances. I think I now will eventually use the Pandora for what I bought it: a mobile gaming device, and not anymore purely as a developing/tinkering device. It shall be fun, not work only!

Gave up the hopes on proper wifi already, accepted that unattended full charging works neither. Only thing missing for me is a launcher, which treats ROMs equally to PNDs, and which can interlace them (by genres or chronologically) and some favorite functionality. And Pandafe goes into that direction, well in the works.

 

[TrashyMG]

Honestly I don't see a gloom and doom picture like you do, I see a ton of great projects happening with the Pandora right now (Compo4all, Drastic, several homebrew games, System Info, benchmarking tools and the list goes on) and as more people are getting Pandoras the more I see new developers enter the scene.. If you only focus on the bad, it's hard to see the good.
 

Personally I have a CC, Rebirth and 1GHz unit and haven't had any Wifi Issues on any of them.. Sure my CC unit network speed is a bit slower than my other two, but the connection is solid. Also Charging seems to work well for me, I put them on the charger and when it's done It's at 100% so I'm not sure if I'm just lucky? who knows.

 

[CocoCreekFisherman]

Honestly I don't see a gloom and doom picture like you do, I see a ton of great projects happening with the Pandora right now (Compo4all, Drastic, several homebrew games, System Info, benchmarking tools and the list goes on) and as more people are getting Pandoras the more I see new developers enter the scene.. If you only focus on the bad, it's hard to see the good.

Personally I have a CC, Rebirth and 1GHz unit and haven't had any Wifi Issues on any of them.. Sure my CC unit network speed is a bit slower than my other two, but the connection is solid. Also Charging seems to work well for me, I put them on the charger and when it's done It's at 100% so I'm not sure if I'm just lucky? who knows.

^ Agree. 

It still is the best mini Linux PC and emulator combined I have ever had my hands on. A wealth of technology here. With the recent advent of Drastic,PPSSPP,apkenv and new games like Kraptor  I would say there is lots more potential left. Older apps /emulators that were difficult for some to navigate have been made to be more user friendly. I appreciate that evolution and the efforts of those involved.

BTW...have you ever played Grim Fandango??....unbelievable!!!!

What about PND manager?? A big step in the right direction and a long time coming yes?

I own two 1 gigs and my wifi is spot on so maybe I am lucky here. My Pandoras runs Firefox version 20.0 faster or as fast than any netbook I ever used.

Rant over.

Respect for you porg.

 

[leathco]

I'll be the first to admit there are problems with the Pandora, sure, but compared to the alternatives you have out there right now, the Pandora more than beats them out.

Your other options right now are:

GCW Zero (no keyboard, and likely shorter battery life, less storage available due to the single slot).  Probably still the best "other" selection besides Pandora.

GP2X Wiz or Caanoo (less power, less battery, screens prone to failure in my experience, no internal wifi, no keyboard)

Yinlips or JXD Android device (poor build quality, iffy controls, more powerful but Android is a power hog, less storage due to single SD, keyboard only available via onscreen or bluetooth)

I'll take my Pandora over all of the above, with the exception of yes I do sort of want a GCW Zero just to support a new Linux native device.  But really, the Wifi is a minor issue that admittedly shouldnt be there.  But the nub really doesnt take up that much space, and the power it uses isnt a major issue either since the Pandora has such a large battery life in the first place.  You *might* lose an hour or two in my experience using a wifi nub.  A second battery not only fixes that problem but also gives you a sigificantly larger usage time.  And a second battery only costs roughly 25 dollars, well worth the purchase.

I have not experienced any problems charging, so I cannot say anything regarding that.  I use a PSP charger, leave it on through the night, and its at 100% in the morning for me.  

I'll give you the ergonomics point.  Yea, its a brick with great gaming controls, so it takes time to adapt to holding it.  But it took me maybe a week to get used to, and lets face it, the DS and 3DS have the same basic design problem, just a little lighter.

PNDManager is great, but I have issues with it.  Anytime it finishes installing something, I have to reset it otherwise its slow as molasses.  Still usable for me on the road, but I still prefer updating on my PC and transferring the PND to my card.

Yea, the Pandora does have some problems, as any device does.  Its strengths outweigh its weaknesses though.  And my model is an original CC, not the new fancy 1GHZ one *drool*

 

[Binky]

The only problem I've had with PND manager is the frigid wait while it writes the file to my (class 16) SDHC card - is there anything that can be done about that?

 

[moxie]

I have the exact opposite feeling about the Pandora and its community - I'm getting amazed, each and every day, of what has been achieved and which continues to be achieved by this small group of people, around the most marginal of computing devices. This "Brick with gaming controls" run at least three OSes and a couple of launchers natively, can emulate just about anything from my youth, and on top of that works as a proper desktop computer in a cinch. And this, all, from volunteers! From people working on their free time, just to make awesome stuff. 

Is it perfect? No, it most certainly isn't. Some units have spotty wifi, the shape might be an aquired taste (although I can't say I ever had any problem playing stuff for hours on end), the charging system has a rather wide hysteresis, and sometimes it gets confused. Sometimes the nubs gets confused, too. To me, that is part of what it is: Part of the history of the frankly completely preposterous idea - Hey, let's make a pocket computer that is a portable Amiga-ish thing! In a sane world, it'd never have worked at all

But perhaps it is a question of expectations. Porg, you're working very, very hard to try to fix up the things that you think are not good enough, and somehow you hope that if enough people work hard enough, it'll magically fix itself in the end and the Pandora will turn into the perfect, flawless machine. I tend to see it more pragmatically: A lot of people have tried to work out why the wifi is spotty for some people. A lot of theory has been tested and dismissed. In the end, possibly it is a hardware problem - Crosstalk from the video circuits? And, if so, it doesn't really matter how many man-hours are applied to the problem - It won't be solved until a Pandora 2, because there is no way to redo the chip placement and track routing. Charging system being a bit wonky? I haven't had much problems there, but that is even more the case: If the charging circuit is faulty (which sounds like an awfully strong word for something that works quite well looking from over here), then there isn't much that more manpower and more volunteers could do, is there? Short of redesigning the mainboard, that is, and then buy off all the unused boards and pay for a new round of testing of the new design and...oh, wait. If the community consisted of Donald Trumps with nowhere to use their money, possibly. As it is, no amount of conviction or dedication will really help.

I don't expect the Pandora to be perfect. And, in particular, I don't expect things in hardware to magically become better by measuring them - I don't expect the pandora to become more perfect in its hardware. I don't believe in hardware miracles. With that said, the FLOSS community around the Pandora is bestowing me with countless software miracles daily

Perhaps you hope for the physically impossible?

 

[CocoCreekFisherman]

I have the exact opposite feeling about the Pandora and its community - I'm getting amazed, each and every day, of what has been achieved and which continues to be achieved by this small group of people, around the most marginal of computing devices. This "Brick with gaming controls" run at least three OSes and a couple of launchers natively, can emulate just about anything from my youth, and on top of that works as a proper desktop computer in a cinch. And this, all, from volunteers! From people working on their free time, just to make awesome stuff. 

Is it perfect? No, it most certainly isn't. Some units have spotty wifi, the shape might be an aquired taste (although I can't say I ever had any problem playing stuff for hours on end), the charging system has a rather wide hysteresis, and sometimes it gets confused. Sometimes the nubs gets confused, too. To me, that is part of what it is: Part of the history of the frankly completely preposterous idea - Hey, let's make a pocket computer that is a portable Amiga-ish thing! In a sane world, it'd never have worked at all

But perhaps it is a question of expectations. Porg, you're working very, very hard to try to fix up the things that you think are not good enough, and somehow you hope that if enough people work hard enough, it'll magically fix itself in the end and the Pandora will turn into the perfect, flawless machine. I tend to see it more pragmatically: A lot of people have tried to work out why the wifi is spotty for some people. A lot of theory has been tested and dismissed. In the end, possibly it is a hardware problem - Crosstalk from the video circuits? And, if so, it doesn't really matter how many man-hours are applied to the problem - It won't be solved until a Pandora 2, because there is no way to redo the chip placement and track routing. Charging system being a bit wonky? I haven't had much problems there, but that is even more the case: If the charging circuit is faulty (which sounds like an awfully strong word for something that works quite well looking from over here), then there isn't much that more manpower and more volunteers could do, is there? Short of redesigning the mainboard, that is, and then buy off all the unused boards and pay for a new round of testing of the new design and...oh, wait. If the community consisted of Donald Trumps with nowhere to use their money, possibly. As it is, no amount of conviction or dedication will really help.

I don't expect the Pandora to be perfect. And, in particular, I don't expect things in hardware to magically become better by measuring them - I don't expect the pandora to become more perfect in its hardware. I don't believe in hardware miracles. With that said, the FLOSS community around the Pandora is bestowing me with countless software miracles daily

Perhaps you hope for the physically impossible?

^ Well said Moxie.

 

[bismuthdrummer]

I like your style a lot, Porg. You demonstrate excellent qualities that any professional should have. You're meticulous, thorough, and boldly dedicated to every undertaking. Were we to draft a dream team for the Pandora 2 I'd vote for you to head the quality assurance team.

Beyond what others have said, I will emphasize that this is a small project. While your efforts are appreciated, they are probably quite a bit overkill since we don't have any kind of staff to act on these things. Maybe try to coordinate your troubleshooting with the official team? I think their guidance would be helpful since they can determine what can and can't be modified or mitigated.

It truly sounds like you have a somewhat faulty unit -- like others here I have a CC and 1 GHz, and neither have the wifi or charging issues you speak of. If you'd like I can trade you the CC board for your faulty one; I'm not using mine anyways. PM me if you're interested.

With regards to the case, I think "industrial" and "sharp" is a bit harsh, though I do understand your point that the ergonomy could use improvement. Case redesign is quite a bit extreme and highly improbable, but what might work is some sort of silicon overgrip like this one from DreamGear. That one's for the 3DS XL and I just tried it -- it's a bit too big, but they do have one for the 3DS regular. Since it's roughly the same form factor perhaps it could be modded to *fit* your needs. Mine is truly heavenly to hold, although it will add a bit of weight to the unit overall.

P.S. Sorry for the bad pun. :rolleyes:

 

[klapse]

How on earth can you hold the OpenPandora so that the corners dig into your palms? Do you have tiny lady hands? My palms are 2cm away from the front corners when holding/playing...

3) Industrial design: The ergonomy of the case & controls have its issues. The combination of being quite heavy (battery!) & corners too sharp (not rounded enough), hurting your palm mussles in certain angles quite soon (5-10min). I cannot play to long without getting cramps in my hands.

 

[PowerGod]

The right bottom corner leaves a mark even in my palm, expecially when I use the shoulder buttons... now it's not that bad because I'm used to it, but the first months of use were a pain.

The iCP2 have more rounded corners, so I hope for a better experience if it will be used as a P2 keyboard.

 

[Jumpman]

I've personally had wi-fi issues, but once I began to use a different wireless router, the problem went away.

I also have the charging issue, but I never cared enough to try and correct it. I just wasn't a big deal to me(but it does annoy me slightly). 

The Pandora will NEVER be an iPad/iPod, which is good IMO, as I haven't touch my iPod touch in close to a year.

The Pandora is what it is. It's not without it's issues, but no device is perfect. I see topics daily over at Gamefaqs in the 3DS and Vita areas where consumers have issues with build and performance quality. Issues for some, my not be for others. I'ts just life I suppose. I just enjoy the Pandora for what it is, not what it's not.

Chris

 

[Abanest]

I would just like to mention that I as well have similar charging problems, with both my CC and 1Ghz unit. I'm lucky to get it to 70% before it stops charging altogether and I have to to unplug, switch it off and plug it back in again for a second go. And even that doesn't always get it to 100%. It's rather odd, actually, as neither units presented this problem in the early days of owning 'em.


But, hey! I love this device. Currently on my second tour of Afghan, and once again have a Pandora unit sitting on my lap during down time. This thing keeps me sane!

 

[Franko]

^  Well said - most of you that commented.  I'm (currently still) a glass half-full kind of guy when it comes to my Pandora.  I've hit a few walls, and then turned and tried an alternative route to accomplish what I wanted to do with it.  Sometimes I needed to read up more or ask questions - even buy some optional accessory to help things along.  That's the nature of dealing with machines - at least for me.  There is no one perfect dream device...you just try to get as much out of it as you can.  Maybe it's the way I think...and having grown up with all kinds of computers/gadgets, and owning a printing business, I'm just used to operating this way.  Don't get discouraged, porg.  I'm sure that the P2 will improve on a lot of things, but for now I'm really enjoying this thing..."warts and all".*  And my unit is fairly new, so I've yet to run across that pesky low-charging battery thing.  Batteries just wear out over time...



*my unit didn't actually come with warts.  

 

[porg]

Hey guys!

Thanks for all your feedback, both regarding my person & involvement in the project and about your Pandora experiences as well!

I just have to mention that the wifi + charging issue happened on each of the 3 Pandoras (2 Original, 1 Rebirth) I have owned so far, so it must be really bad luck!!!

If OP GmbH would show readiness, should I send it in again and hope that my 4th Pandora may eventually have working WiFi and charging?

 

[Binky]

I just have to mention that the wifi + charging issue happened on each of the 3 Pandoras (2 Original, 1 Rebirth) I have owned so far, so it must be really bad luck!!!

It seems like it

My pandora's wifi has been perfectly good ever since I removed the metal tape

 

[WizardStan]

Where do you live and is this an original CC, rebirth, or 1Ghz Pandora?

 

[Binky]

Mine's a summer 2012 rebirth

in 31a

 

[WizardStan]

I meant Porg. I'm considering an experiment.

 

[Binky]

Read his post B)

 

[WizardStan]

Ah, quite right. I'm a herpderp. Too far I think for this to work. I was hoping to do some kind of (temporary) switch, see how my good wifi works in his area and vice versa, but for some reason I thought he was in north america. Atlantic shipping just for such a test wouldn't be worth it.