Not much text here. Just a video.

[Grench]

Interesting Video, not much to complain about. Except the Phillips-head screws on the prototype, they are butt-ugly! Showing screw heads is fine, has some retro-tech-feeling. But then I would choose flat, single slotted screws.

And out of curiosity: how thick would this Pyra-phone be with battery?

Somewhere there is a thread where a few of us went on and on and on and on about the proper screw type, construction, head, slot and drive...

At this point, the screws could be whatever is available and effective.

 

[levi]

I assume they're the same ones used on the Pandora; it has Phillips heads too. I suspect it maybe only looks odd to you because you can see the support rings through the clear case.

Edit: Phone thickness depends on how thick the battery is. The screen and touchscreen looks to be about 1.5mm at a guess from the video, and the PCBs may be just under a mm times two (phone pcb and CPU pcb), and then there's the standoff provided by the connectors between the two, which I think to be a little over 1mm. That adds up to 3 and a bit mm plus however thick your battery is.

 

[aTc]

I know that a first-boot wizard is something that you can see by booting up any Linux version and that the Pyra’s one isn’t anything special, but I still appreciate seeing it on the Pyra anyway because it helps me visualize what I’ll be doing in the first few minutes after getting mine.

I hope not, the current first-run is just supposed to be a temporary solution, until someone writes a nice gui.
It's actually intentionally bad to get someone annoyed enough to do it.

 

[JDTAY]

I hope not, the current first-run is just supposed to be a temporary solution, until someone writes a nice gui.
It's actually intentionally bad to get someone annoyed enough to do it.

You're talking about Linux users here. The harder the interface is to use, the more they like it. See: vim and emacs

 

[ClockworkCoder]

You're talking about Linux users here. The harder the interface is to use, the more they like it. See: vim and emacs

Vim is dead easy to use, and extremely efficient. Probably not so useful on a keyboard too small to touch type on though...

 

[levi]

I used vim for almost all of my text editing needs on my Pandora. Never had a problem thumb typing it.

 

[fusion_power]

Somewhere there is a thread where a few of us went on and on and on and on about the proper screw type, construction, head, slot and drive...

Really? NERDS!

I assume they're the same ones used on the Pandora; it has Phillips heads too.

My old first batch Pandora came with a ordinary wood-screw in between the normal screws, no joke.

 

[docbroke]

You're talking about Linux users here. The harder the interface is to use, the more they like it. See: vim and emacs

It is not about harder interface, it is about what is more efficient even if there is a bit of learning cycle. If one learns to use keyboard shortcuts it is always more efficient as compared to so easy to use point and click interfaces ( mouse or touchscreen), additionally it saves screen estate as you don't need large neon signs to target with your fingers or mouse.

 

[Askarus]

I bet the Phone has a camera and NFC.
And the poor Pyra still won't be an all-in-one device.

 

[Bernd]

Interesting Video, not much to complain about. Except the Phillips-head screws on the prototype, they are butt-ugly! Showing screw heads is fine, has some retro-tech-feeling. But then I would choose flat, single slotted screws.

Single slotted screws are a pain.
There is the risk to slip of the screw and scratch the case and they take longer to screw in with an electric screwdriver.

Philips screws got invented because of this.

The only practical screw head types are Philips, Allen or Torx.
Single slot screws are the only type of screw I dont want to have on the Pyra.
Okay, this damn oneway-screws which have to be drilled out to open the case are a little bit wors than single slot screws.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

After 3 years, this forum never ceases to amaze me. Keyboards, capacitors, colours, paint, yes... but I never thought there would be a discussion of types of screws re the Pyra!

 

[fusion_power]

Single slotted screws are a pain.
There is the risk to slip of the screw and scratch the case and they take longer to screw in with an electric screwdriver.

Philips screws got invented because of this.

I know that fact. I was only refering the pure looks, not the practical aspects. Good compromise would be just to cover the screws somehow. Of course the pictures only show the prototype so the question about the right screw is actualy unimportant at the moment.

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

Thank you for all the information @EvilDragon. Waiting over for the next project update in july!

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I like videos so I can see the cool hairs and cool shirt

 

[el joker]

In two months !

 

[levi]

Single slotted screws are a pain.
There is the risk to slip of the screw and scratch the case and they take longer to screw in with an electric screwdriver.

Philips screws got invented because of this.

Not entirely. Phillips screwheads got invented to automatically centre the screwdriver to enable him/her to provide maximum torque, which probably helps you screw it in faster with an electric screwdriver (although I wouldn't advise using such a tool of mass destruction on our little pyras personally). But it has a secondary design criteria which was that if you over torque your tool and risk damaging the head, the angle is sufficient that the screwdriver is designed to cam out of the hole and all over your worksurface. Subsequently, for situations where this wasn't desirable posidrive was introduces which I think uses a steeper angle (it's certainly different anyway) and extra flanges to lock the head more positively in the hole while you're providing axial force from the tool towards the hole.

But for some reason I've never seen a small screw head with a posidrive hole in it (perhaps it's too complex a shape to make at such a scale). Your mainstream choice for screws smaller than about 2mm is limited to slotted and phillips. Because I understand the reasoning behind the heads I'm not a fan of slotted screws; it was just the simplest thing that worked once upon a time, while newer solutions work better.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

posidrive

Pozidriv.

 

[asimov-solensan]

Thanks for the update. I'm very curious about what will be the sustained performance of Pyra, at least for a couple of hours running things like: PPSSPP, dreamcast, dosbox, mame, ... I guess other use cases from my side will just use CPU at full for short periods.

But for those mentioned and others I can't remember right now I would like to see huge improvement compared to Pandora, I would feel deeply disappointed if there isn't.

I guess I'm worried since ED comment about temperature. Let's see what are the comments from developers and first users.

 

[FBnil]

I guess I'm worried since ED comment about temperature

Don't worry. The Pandora also got extremely hot, especially when the screen gets turned on with a closed lid, while in my backpack because I forgot to lock it. I put wet toilet paper between the nubs to keep it cool, and also on the underside next to the battery. Despite the heat, everything still works. From the high quality eMMC (internal disk) to the battery.

Are you worried that the buttons won't fit when hot?

 

[levi]

Thanks for the update. I'm very curious about what will be the sustained performance of Pyra, at least for a couple of hours running things like: PPSSPP, dreamcast, dosbox, mame, ... I guess other use cases from my side will just use CPU at full for short periods.

But for those mentioned and others I can't remember right now I would like to see huge improvement compared to Pandora, I would feel deeply disappointed if there isn't.

I guess I'm worried since ED comment about temperature. Let's see what are the comments from developers and first users.

Well, I was watching a game dev blog video thing the other day, and they were developing a mobile game. They mentioned that to show all of the blingiest effects they needed to pace them carefully so they only stressed the phone for relatively short periods and then show less bling for a while to let them cool down. I didn't realise before now they needed to target the hardware like that.

Meanwhile, emulators for hot old systems* can't do that. The benefit we've got is that mostly they're old now so they can run in the thermal envelope we've got, but you might have to employ some kind of after-market mod or something if you want to emulate the latest systems, we'll have to see what comes on that front. But I'm pretty sure we should be able to do everything we could on the Pandora and more before we start to hit the buffers on unmodified units.

I think it was this video that contained the comments about mobile development:
* The last naturally aspirated system I owned was the N64, and that got pretty damn hot at times. Everything after that has had a fan in it, despite being disc based, and I can imagine attaching an impeller to the bottom of the drive motor would have much the same effect.