Pandora Alternative

[mali]

^ UMID has been in business a bit longer already and the first M1 case was really crap, with hinge cracks and all. I expect Pandora's cases to be ahead in quality.

edit:
And regarding software, UMID and Viliv devices are x86 and run windows, so no surprises there.

 

[Nintendo]

Didn't Criag make some comment about 3 months ago, wanting to 'punch those vaporware twats in the face'?
I can only imagine in my wildest dreams that the manager of ANY company would make such a statement when he was SURE his units were about to ship.

Yes, but Pandora is a reality, meaning it's DEFINITELY not a vapourware product, so having said that, I wouldn't mind helping smash a few or more vapourware twats faces around here.

I've been using my Motorola Droid to run nes, snes and gba emulators. There are also some games available through the android marketplace. It has a qwerty keyboard and a dpad, so gaming is not so bad. Its the only thing keeping me sane while I'm waiting for my Pandora.

D-pad on the right side?

 

[twent4]

While not as powerful as the Pandora, i would keep a close eye on nokia's Maemo phones, currently the N900. Just too bad the damn thing isn't GSM/UMTS.

 

[bustaballs]

Any of the alternatives worth having don't have gaming controls and if they do, you only get the software that comes with them.

 

[twent4]

yes it is

Whoops my bad. I looked at the frequencies a long time ago, and anything that doesn't jive with north american GSM registers as a write-off in my head I guess nokia don't see a market here for cool toys.

 

[aesir911]

try checking out craig's icontrolpad. it will be released shortly after the pandora. just jailbreak your ipod touch, then you can play emulators with controls, and still have music, web, and email on it. (unlike pandora alternatives such as the gp2x wiz and dingoo)

 

[Kangal]

man, N900 would be unbeatable if it had gaming controls... "you can't always get what you want"

Agreed. It wouldn't be uneatable, just would be the best so far.
1)Improvements can be made to give it more juice & graphics.
2)Gaming controls are extensively tested, fluid and polished. This would (imho) probably mean ditching nubs in support of short-flatish joystick to give that vertical comfort and tactile support.
3)Maybe MMS support?
4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.
5)WiMaX!!!!
6)Tilt-Slide like the N97 for slightly better typing under sunlight and more finger room for the L&R,1,2 dedicated buttons.
7)Maybe get rid of kickstand in the back in the back because the screen now tilts?
8)Better speakers and dual mic for noise cancellation for conferencing would be welcomed.
9)Better battery perhaps if their is the alternative.
10)Actual GPS instead of aGPS ...for high quality navigation though this would probably consume more internal space.
11)Infared to convert phone into universal remote including frequencies that open automated gates/garage doors would be sweet.
12)Dual sim wouldn't be necessary but some bimbos like them ... bloody bimbos.
13)At least 1 SD slot: support for devices with SD entries. Would be good to have a second that's microSD (space efficiency)
14)universal miniUSB instead of proprietery ones, or maybe 2 of these!
15)Video out capabilities from one miniUSB slots ... or does N900 already have this

ed: 16)OLED or AMOLED screen with LED-backlighting to vastly improve usage under sunlight for people like Aussies!

All in all, N900 is a very very awesome device.
But if you set your mind to it, you can improve it*


*according to your opinion! ie some may see swapping QWERTY out for game-controls unnecessary

 

[Exophase]

Why not apply all that to Nexus One instead? It has a much faster CPU and an AMOLED screen. The 3D is probably not on par though.

I'd really love to see some actual cycle timing information on Snapdragon. I've wondered if their four-wide NEON FPU also translates into any better than 1x32 integer multiplication performance. (something like 8x or 16x 16-bit multiplications would be pretty kick-ass too ;p)

 

[bsamm97]

I've been using my Motorola Droid to run nes, snes and gba emulators. There are also some games available through the android marketplace. It has a qwerty keyboard and a dpad, so gaming is not so bad. Its the only thing keeping me sane while I'm waiting for my Pandora.

D-pad on the right side?
[/quote]

Yes, the dpad is on the right. It's not the most optimized solution, but it works. Plus, you can always reverse the output and at the very least play it with the dpad to the left...if you're comfy with the screen below the keys...

 

[Kangal]

I've been using my Motorola Droid to run nes, snes and gba emulators. There are also some games available through the android marketplace. It has a qwerty keyboard and a dpad, so gaming is not so bad. Its the only thing keeping me sane while I'm waiting for my Pandora.

D-pad on the right side?

Yes, the dpad is on the right. It's not the most optimized solution, but it works. Plus, you can always reverse the output and at the very least play it with the dpad to the left...if you're comfy with the screen below the keys...
[/quote]

For a second I thought this was about Odroid which has 3 D-pads. Moto Droid ... that's a bummer! Yeah I guess you can have the screen on the bottom but that would probbly be too weird. Or you can maybe change the buttons and use the tiny WAZD buttons as navigational and the larger D-pad as the action keys. Or maybe there's someone out there who actually opened the device and put a custom alternative on (possible just look at custom PSP's with dual nubs) ... though they'd have to be well experienced and willing to destroy the device's warranty and any prospects of selling the device once it gets boring

 

[bzar]

Just a few comments:

3)Maybe MMS support?
4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.
6)Tilt-Slide like the N97 for slightly better typing under sunlight and more finger room for the L&R,1,2 dedicated buttons.
7)Maybe get rid of kickstand in the back in the back because the screen now tilts?
8)Better speakers and dual mic for noise cancellation for conferencing would be welcomed.
9)Better battery perhaps if their is the alternative.
10)Actual GPS instead of aGPS ...for high quality navigation though this would probably consume more internal space.
11)Infared to convert phone into universal remote including frequencies that open automated gates/garage doors would be sweet.
13)At least 1 SD slot: support for devices with SD entries. Would be good to have a second that's microSD (space efficiency)
14)universal miniUSB instead of proprietery ones, or maybe 2 of these!
15)Video out capabilities from one miniUSB slots ... or does N900 already have this
16)OLED or AMOLED screen with LED-backlighting to vastly improve usage under sunlight for people like Aussies!

3) AFAIK this is a missing software feature, not a hardware problem.
4) What is it with capacitive touch screens? The only actual advantage I know of is multi touch, and so far I've seen it only used as a gimmick. The best use I've witnessed was a two-player air hockey game on an iPod.
6) More moving parts, more points of failure. If build quality is retained, I have no objection.
7) Or change the kickstand to something like the n810 has. The on in N900 is quite flimsy.
8) Oh yes! I've done some telecoms with my N900 and the echo is horrible. This could be fixed with software though I think.
9) With current LiPo tech you would need a bigger battery to get more mAh. The N900 is already as big as it can IMO.
10) aGPS means that the GPS is assisted (hence the 'a') using cellular network information to get a satellite lock quickly. It has a "real" GPS. AFAIK the problem is the antenna, which is significantly smaller than on dedicated GPS devices.
11) N900 has infrared. How would you copy your garage IR key? AFAIK they use some sort of rotating key system to prevent easy key eavesdropping. So even if it supported those frequencies you couldn't realistically use it to open your garage.
13) SD slots are huge in the form factor of a phone. Have you seen how tightly the N900 is packed? where could you possibly fit something as big?
14) They are not proprietary, they are standard microUSB-B connectors.
15) N900 has an analog video out. Do you mean something like DVI? Same problem as with the pandora. OMAP does not support two simultaneous digital video outs. Video over USB is possible, but the compression required would probably be too much for the processor.
16) OLED screens by definition do not require a backlight, as they produce their own. Check the differences between LCD and OLED screen technologies.

All in all, N900 is a very very awesome device.
But if you set your mind to it, you can improve it*

This is very correct, there is always room for improvement

 

[WizardStan]

Just a few comments:

4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.

4) What is it with capacitive touch screens? The only actual advantage I know of is multi touch, and so far I've seen it only used as a gimmick. The best use I've witnessed was a two-player air hockey game on an iPod.

Apple did capacitive touch screen and marketing took over. All people see are the benefits to multi-touch but don't get informed of the draw backs.
There are things that can only be done on a resistive screen, and others that can be done much better. I wonder if the people asking for capacitive screens understand what they lose when they use them.

 

[Awakening]

There are now multitouch capable resitive screens. Check this one out, it got multitouch and detects 256 levels of pressure.

Multitouch is nice for games but also for gestures that can be used for navigation, image browsing etc.

 

[aesir911]

Just a few comments:

4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.

4) What is it with capacitive touch screens? The only actual advantage I know of is multi touch, and so far I've seen it only used as a gimmick. The best use I've witnessed was a two-player air hockey game on an iPod.

Apple did capacitive touch screen and marketing took over. All people see are the benefits to multi-touch but don't get informed of the draw backs.
There are things that can only be done on a resistive screen, and others that can be done much better. I wonder if the people asking for capacitive screens understand what they lose when they use them.

have you seen craig's icontrolpad that's coming out for the ipod touch / iphone? i think that'll help get rid of many of those drawbacks.

 

[lulzfish]

The drawback of capacitive touch screens is that you can't use gloves / pencils / normal styluses on them.
I don't think the iControlPad will fix that, though it might patch over some of the iPhone's specific design flaws that are unrelated to touchscreen.

 

[bzar]

Just a few comments:

4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.

4) What is it with capacitive touch screens? The only actual advantage I know of is multi touch, and so far I've seen it only used as a gimmick. The best use I've witnessed was a two-player air hockey game on an iPod.

Apple did capacitive touch screen and marketing took over. All people see are the benefits to multi-touch but don't get informed of the draw backs.
There are things that can only be done on a resistive screen, and others that can be done much better. I wonder if the people asking for capacitive screens understand what they lose when they use them.

have you seen craig's icontrolpad that's coming out for the ipod touch / iphone? i think that'll help get rid of many of those drawbacks.

How does a game controller add-on fix drawbacks in the touchscreen technology? AFAICT we were talking about advantages and drawbacks of capacitive touchscreen technology, not the input devices of any single product. Of course iControlPad will offer better gaming controls for iPod/iPhone, but it won't make the drawbacks of a capacitive touchscreen go away. I'm sorry if that came out as offensive, but you seem to have misunderstood something

 

[aesir911]

Just a few comments:

4)Capacitative screen with a capac. stylus with its own hole in the device.

4) What is it with capacitive touch screens? The only actual advantage I know of is multi touch, and so far I've seen it only used as a gimmick. The best use I've witnessed was a two-player air hockey game on an iPod.

Apple did capacitive touch screen and marketing took over. All people see are the benefits to multi-touch but don't get informed of the draw backs.
There are things that can only be done on a resistive screen, and others that can be done much better. I wonder if the people asking for capacitive screens understand what they lose when they use them.

have you seen craig's icontrolpad that's coming out for the ipod touch / iphone? i think that'll help get rid of many of those drawbacks.

How does a game controller add-on fix drawbacks in the touchscreen technology? AFAICT we were talking about advantages and drawbacks of capacitive touchscreen technology, not the input devices of any single product. Of course iControlPad will offer better gaming controls for iPod/iPhone, but it won't make the drawbacks of a capacitive touchscreen go away. I'm sorry if that came out as offensive, but you seem to have misunderstood something

no worries, i see your argument now.

 

[Fzero]

I been checking the icontrolpad for a bit now and was keen to get it, the first pics where it had the controls on the side, that was a nice look, only really added a bit of length to the iPhone.
I'm not so sure I like the look of the new one as much, I guess using pandora controls limited where they could fit and had to go under the iPhone rather than sides, it looks like it might not be too pocket friendly.
If it was like the early images shape I probably wouldn't take my iPhone out the icontrolpad
Still might well get one though, depending on price

 

[amortvigil]

New pandora alternative, no gaming buttons but comes with dvd-player
commoreusa

 

[puppydee]

New pandora alternative, no gaming buttons but comes with dvd-player
commoreusa

Hmm, just another windows machine however you dress it up. Notice how they're after the old amiga gamers Not really portable tho and lets face it, it's just a laptop without the screen, nothing amazing and will probably flop