Pandora Not Powerful Enough?

[pelrun]

Oh, I had nothing to do with the image, it's from this thread: Pandora Alternative

 

[hal9000]

The most worrying aspect here for me is that most users seem to want the Pandora for emulation as its primary purpose. That also seems such a waste and a shame for me. Emulation should be an added bonus. I really hope we get some decent homebrew and commercial apps too.

I expect Pandora to be a nice ultra-small netbook, but in the gaming field, I would not expect too much that GP2X cannot already do, beyond emulation.

Homebrew are typically 2D games, not demanding in ressources. I have hard time to find a homebrews that already exists on PC, that could be ported to Pandora and that cannot be ported to GP2X. Of course, this is conceivable, you could make great openGL mobile games, but the fact is that there are very few existing openGL open source games, and (sorry) most of them are not really good or not suitable to mobile gaming.

For commercial games, I would not hold my breath.

 

[SirAileron]

Oh, I had nothing to do with the image, it's from this thread: Pandora Alternative

Sweet Jesus, has that thing transformed from when it first spawned. That wireless turd router/adapter is brilliant.

 

[Kangal]

Oh, I had nothing to do with the image, it's from this thread: Pandora Alternative

Sweet Jesus, has that thing transformed from when it first spawned. That wireless turd router/adapter is brilliant.

That funny picture inspired me to upload my design.
So here is what is most likely the best design of a handheld (gaming&computing) device (ie Pandora's little bro).

I put in some specs for amusement (forgot to mention vibration at the bottom of device that makes it dance when put upright on a table)

Look at each detail closely as everything has a reason why its there in that spot, size, shape.

Eg huge screen = easier web browsing
Eg nub controls mouse = feature to turn off touchscreen -> power managment
Eg Slide tilt screen = give larger screen real estate, give more finger room for R&L buttons
Eg R2 & L2 buttons = more buttons for certain consoles/games ... or other feature like camera button, flash button, shortcut to home ... or just customizable
Eg 2 USB's = one can charge the phone while other connects as TV-out
Eg Scroll button = you mechanically change volume of console (not speakers) and at lowest point it clicks to activate "Vibrate Only"
Eg An inward folding support bracket = supports tilting of screen by locking it in a position to inhibit a weak slide of the screen (refer to N97)
Eg mini lights decorating most buttons (can be switched off) which respond to sound emitted from device
Eg infrared = (can switch off) more connectivity, use device as universal remote control
Eg device with matt silver hard-plastic housing = max protection with min weight + no fingerprints (refer to iPaq H2210)
Eg position of microphone = away from speakers
Eg lack of other buttons/keyboard = a more simple layout optimised for gaming and portability (so touch-keyboard)
Eg position of headset and USB inputs = not interfering with your grip of the console/touching you
Eg position of lanyard hole etc etc etc

Please dont diss my design it is awesomer than Pandora (I think). Any praise? Any suggestions?

EDIT: The only other feature I could think of giving it was phone feature with 3G and video calling. 3G for accessing the net or App store. But this wouldn't be fair. Eventhough the N900 has achieved this.

 

[mali]

Cramming working nubs in a slider could be awkward. Also the missing thumb keyboard would be a step backwards for some. 145g is not reasonable, because the current battery alone weighs 80g. OLED is still too short-lived(Pixel Qi technology might be a better choice). 18mm height is very unlikely to be achievable.

 

[Awakening]

145g is not reasonable, because the current battery alone weighs 80g.

But then he only wants half the battery life of the Pandora

And for some reason his screen is both TFT and OLED

 

[renegadechic]

Please dont diss my design it is awesomer than Pandora (I think)

NO U

Seriously, be as creative as you like but don't immediately diss someone elses design immediately after asking someone not to diss your design.

 

[Kangal]

145g is not reasonable, because the current battery alone weighs 80g.

But then he only wants half the battery life of the Pandora

And for some reason his screen is both TFT and OLED

HAHA ... observant you are. I only noticed after I uploaded, then it was too late. This is a 2yr old drawing btw.
Most PPC's (eg HTC and iPaq) from what I've seen have TFT and these look really beautiful even under sunlight.
But then again I READ somewhere that new samsung phones use OLED because of power.
So for the screen it is either depending on how good OLED looks under sunlight and how much power it saves.
I'm not debating either way. Thanks for your posts again! :lol: :gp2x andora2ut4:

 

[Exophase]

Too bad Open Pandora didn't include the Emulates PSP, Dreamcast, and N64 chip from the start. Would have saved everyone a lot of difficulty.

I'm curious how the screen actually stays connected in that design. And TV-out over USB, that's just not going to work well.

Of course, this would probably cost over $600 anyway - good luck selling what's clearly a gaming handheld at those prices.

I really think you should lay off the Pandora a little. It was designed as something that could realistically be built (even so, at pretty substantial effort) by a small team without outrageous amounts of startup capital and sold at a reasonable price. It wasn't just a drawing of what they thought would be the coolest handheld possible. So you shouldn't compare it to your fantasies which have several potential mechanical and cost problems and are not being backed by a company that has the resources to bring it to fruition. I mean, the way you're looking at this you'd may as well put "emulate XBox" as a specification. You might think listing PSP emulation is reasonable, but even on PC PSP emulation is still in its early stages. And you can't get much more powerful hardware than what Pandora has, unless you have a major large manufacturer custom design a processor for you. And had them start years ago.

At any rate, a lot of this is still very subjective. You might think this is the "best" design, but obviously the Open Pandora people think a real keyboard is much more useful than you do. Some agree, some don't. Bear in mind that they want the keyboard for emulating old computers, not just for casual text entry.

 

[Kangal]

Sorry for the duplicate posts,
goto this one it is in the correct thread.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50928-pandora-2-concept/page__st__150__gopid__796590&#entry796590

Kun fu "Panda" + "Dora" the explorer = Pandora (educational and fun!)

 

[renegadechic]

At any rate, a lot of this is still very subjective. You might think this is the "best" design, but obviously the Open Pandora people think a real keyboard is much more useful than you do. Some agree, some don't. Bear in mind that they want the keyboard for emulating old computers, not just for casual text entry.

i always thought the keyboard was a nice afterthought but not exactly that significant, but then when EvilDragon did this video my opinion completely turned around to thinking it was completely immense. it looks really really usable and intuitive

 

[Awakening]

i always thought the keyboard was a nice afterthought but not exactly that significant, but then when EvilDragon did this video my opinion completely turned around to thinking it was completely immense. it looks really really usable and intuitive

The first look I had of the Pandora (was going to see what was going on with the GP2X) was with a white keyboard in a black case and I thought it was ugly as hell. Later I started to think about the usefulness of a built in keyboard and now with the current keymat it looks really sexy. I can just pick it up and write a little now and then, and maybe even code on it.

 

[ldesnogu]

A modern SoC that looks exciting now, Tegra2: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3714

 

[mali]

Nvidia is dependent on tegra/tegra2's success. It's a slowly decaying company in my opinion, so I'd rather bet on someone else.

 

[Phawx]

Yea, Nvidia is in bad shape right now. They don't have DX11 cards on market yet and Intel won't give them the license to make chipsets for newer intel processors.

 

[ldesnogu]

I think that it's a chance for Tegra that nVidia has difficulties in the graphics card segment: they have to make Tegra a success :lol:

 

[calc84maniac]

I heard a rumor that the successor to the DS was going to use a Tegra - that could help

 

[mali]

Tegra 2 _is_ interesting, but Tegra is crap. Tegra has basically been a running gag. It was presented on every exhibition, but no products have been available till the Zune. Also Tegra is ARM11, so it's dead already. There are so many new ARM SoCs coming out so that I don't think Tegra 2 will gain enough marketshare to be a success.

 

[Yoyobuae]

Yea, Nvidia is in bad shape right now. They don't have DX11 cards on market yet and Intel won't give them the license to make chipsets for newer intel processors.

Oh wow, I didn't know Intel backstabbed Nvidia like that. I though the AMD/ATI vs Intel/Nvidia war was gonna continue for a while longer. Not a fan of Nvidia video cards, but still shocking news.

Now Tegra2 sounds really nice. I would be very interested in a Cortex A9 powered netbook. I don't really care for Win-tel anymore and I'm glad I made the jump into Linux. ARM devices are a viable option for because of that.

 

[Adventus]

I think the Pandora will be plenty fast enough for a while yet. Half the fun developing for a handheld is the fact you have to work within its constraints / quirks. These things make it hard for a generic compiler to optimize for but far more interesting for an experienced developer. When you consider the handheld homebrew platforms that went before (GP32, GP2X, PSP), there's nothing as interesting as a Cortex A8 + NEON + SGX + DSP. Luckily it looks like this combination (Cortex + NEON and SGX anyway) will remain pretty common for a while so anything programmed for Pandora will probably scale up to newer platforms rather easily. I think the fact that there's lots devices based on this (or similar) platform is a blessing, it means more developers and better overlap from other communities.

Consider what would be gained via an upgrade... all i can think of is decent fullspeed Dreamcast and some Opensource multiplayer FPS's. There's really not many mature opensource applications that absolutely need more horsepower.

If in any area I made a mistake please TELL me, not scream at me. I am genuinly interested in Pandora but I just wanted to clearly know its limits.

Unlike the others, The SGX is a unified shader design, if you do less fragment work you can do more vertex work. Also due to the TBDR nature of its design you generally have to do less fragment work (maybe a third of a IMR in typical 3d scenes). It is unclear whether the numbers posted by ImgTech are purely theoretical or real world. Its also a more advanced chip than all those mentioned in the first post.... for instance you can use single pass shaders to replicate what would have been multiple passes on the fixed function platforms.