Pandora - Obsolete?

[SNESFAN]

if the Pandora has under 2200 unique apps after the first few months then it's failed ,

I don't quite get this new trend to try to count the number of apps available..
apps vary in size and quality and the amount of effort involved in making them so much that it just doesn't seem to make any sense at all.

nice misquote there.

This isn't directed at you, but the whole number thing in general. The reason I even brought up an exact number of apps was just a figure, and that figure in my belief is directly proportional ratio to what "I belive" are quality apps vs garbage from each particular source. I think it would be impossible to say any one source has x number of good apps, the amount of time it would take to filter through what I thought was garbage apps would take forever, and then be instantly argued as was said "one person's garbage is another person's gem" or something to that extent. So I'm sorry I even brought up numbers, but as far as what "I personally" enjoy as far as which source has the best apps "in my opinion" would be apple's app store, next would be android's, then finally webOS, ratio wise. Again sorry for the whole number thing. I was just trying to think of the easiest way to compare.

The reason I think Android makes a great choice is because obviously it's open, and it's mainstream, no other mainstream mobile OS really has that, so I tend to gravitate towards that when I think of an option for the Pandora. Winmo, palmOS, webOS, blackberry OS, iphoneOS, blah blah blah... all would be great but it would take an insane amount of effort to get running on the pandora, if it were even possible. Even if it did, it couldn't be officially supported and there might be alot of legal problems behind even having it running and distributed in the first place. Hell if there was a magic wand to make it possible I'd want iphoneOS or windows xp on the pandora... but that obviously ain't going to happen. Android is the best shot we got, and it almost seems to me as the obvious answer, to getting a taste of mainstream on our beloved handheld. It may not run some stuff as well as angstrom but the effort to port vs the benefits of all it has to offer is honestly a very fair trade off, and as I mentioned the publicity, apps, inovations of what others are comming out with would help some as well. Especially if it were just an option to the end user.

From what I've seen either option would be great for whatever the target user is. I think angstrom will be liked and enjoyed by many, but it may not be the best option for everyone. For those that are very comfortable with linux and navigation of the command line and tinkering, it will probally be more than enough and the dream setup. For those who just want stuff to work without opening up a text editor or command line, and just want to be dazzled by eye candy and stuff they are familiar with, I think android would suit those users better. Not all of us are hardcore coders believe it or not, myself included.

 

[Prometheus]

I think angstrom will be liked and enjoyed by many, but it may not be the best option for everyone. For those that are very comfortable with linux and navigation of the command line and tinkering, it will probally be more than enough and the dream setup. For those who just want stuff to work without opening up a text editor or command line, and just want to be dazzled by eye candy and stuff they are familiar with, I think android would suit those users better.

I'm terribly sorry, because this reply makes it look like I'm ignoring the rest of your post (I'm not, I just read through it ), but, are you by any chance thinking of a different Angstrom to the one the team have shown...? Because much of what they've shown appears to match much of what you're claiming of Android, as far as I'm aware. :blink:

 

[second exodous]

I think angstrom will be liked and enjoyed by many, but it may not be the best option for everyone. For those that are very comfortable with linux and navigation of the command line and tinkering, it will probally be more than enough and the dream setup. For those who just want stuff to work without opening up a text editor or command line, and just want to be dazzled by eye candy and stuff they are familiar with, I think android would suit those users better.

I'm terribly sorry, because this reply makes it look like I'm ignoring the rest of your post (I'm not, I just read through it ), but, are you by any chance thinking of a different Angstrom to the one the team have shown...? Because much of what they've shown appears to match much of what you're claiming of Android, as far as I'm aware. :blink:

+1

Also you need to realize that this port of Ångström is being developed for one device, every Pandora is the same so there won't be any command line to worry about if the OP team sets it up correctly. The problems you're thinking of that crop up in Linux is mostly hardware issues and different set ups in software. Pandora won't have any of this, you don't need to worry.

 

[SNESFAN]

I'm terribly sorry, because this reply makes it look like I'm ignoring the rest of your post (I'm not, I just read through it ), but, are you by any chance thinking of a different Angstrom to the one the team have shown...? Because much of what they've shown appears to match much of what you're claiming of Android, as far as I'm aware. :blink:

nono, it's cool, I hate walls of text and quote pyramids as much as the next guy. I try to snip quotes down to the pertinent info to my point as well.

I have seen, and agree angstrom's desktop and minimal menu envroinment is very nice. But I have to tip my had to android as far as general appearance and fluidity goes. I'll make a final decision once I see it first hand obviously. Internet browsing looks easy enough with the stylus and typeing and all that, but from what I seen nothing explicitly better than android, in fact I'd even go as far as to say a little more cumbersome. Finger friendly (even on an resistive touch) my vote goes to android.

Downloading apps (we haven't fully seen OP's solution to this, going from internet to your pandora) my guess is they refined it more in android, more people working on it, more money thrown at it, more time in development etc. (please don't anyone misquote me on the money being thrown at it lol)

Some more really mainstream apps, slacker internet radio (with cacheing), flash (when it comes out "soon"), netflix streaming (ran by silverlight agian "soon"), google voice, google maps (and other location aware programs based off wifi access location sort of sudo gps), and lots of others (I am willing to expand on what else is available if you would like) will probally not make it to angstrom in any officially supported means. They would be needed to be ported to either linux or arm, or both correct? I'm talking just about end user here, no using git or webapps, or porting, just one click installs with android, I think will be a generally easier experience to getting their stuff to run. I'm a non-dev end user so I'm not underestimating the potential skills here I don't think.

I'm no linux wiz but I do/have use(d) it, I've ran a couple versions of Ubuntu on various computers, and from growing up with windows as my main OS, and using both OS's in question here, I have to say the general feel is less "clunky" with the current forms of android 2.0/2.1+(minus 1.0/1.5 that does feel rather unrefined) and linux seems to me as more of a expert's OS. You have to actually know what you're doing to get alot of stuff to run, some stuff does "just work", but not everything, I've had to rip into git on multiple occasions to grab an app, or update or whatever... it just takes some getting used to. Also the desktop envroinment in whatever form (moblin is actually pretty mobile friendly) was designed for some form of mouse. Android was designed around using pointer/finger.

Agian, I'm not trying to defend android agianst linux, cause that's freaking dumb, they're basically the same thing, and not meaning as a pro vs con, I'm just thinking one might be slightly more geared twoards your average dumb user. (I have my moments where I like being that guy)

 

[SNESFAN]

Also you need to realize that this port of Ångström is being developed for one device, every Pandora is the same so there won't be any command line to worry about if the OP team sets it up correctly. The problems you're thinking of that crop up in Linux is mostly hardware issues and different set ups in software. Pandora won't have any of this, you don't need to worry.

Now that I think about it, you're absolutely right, the pnd's will be one click runs, and yea they can be just as clean as a apk from android where everything it needs gets put in it's correct place, no command line needed. There is alot of "just as good" with both. I'm perfectly fine with that, and if nothing else ever comes up then I'm sure it will be fine. It wasn't a very solid point, but it was just one of the points I was trying to make.

 

[Prometheus]

Just two things come to mind right now, but;

1: One-click installs: Have you seen the PND system? I'm honestly surprised that nobody thought of it sooner. :lol:

2: I must admit that I know little about Android because I (quite frankly) don't care about it because it offers me nothing of use, but I have a question: I had heard that the Android Market thing is only available on Google-sanctioned devices, or something like that. Am I mistaken? (Or does it only apply to particular things?)

EDIT: Ninja'd. :lol:

 

[SNESFAN]

Just two things come to mind right now, but;

1: One-click installs: Have you seen the PND system? I'm honestly surprised that nobody thought of it sooner. :lol:

2: I must admit that I know little about Android because I (quite frankly) don't care about it because it offers me nothing of use, but I have a question: I had heard that the Android Market thing is only available on Google-sanctioned devices, or something like that. Am I mistaken? (Or does it only apply to particular things?)

EDIT: Ninja'd. :lol:

alright, so 2) yes the official google market has to be hacked into your image so it can run. Why google didn't open source that portion is beyond me. It can be purchased from google for whatever fee they charge, no known info exists that I'm aware of, on how to get this stamp of approval, not my place to ask, but it would be worth looking into if official OP support is given. There are alternate open source routes for downloading and purchaseing and installing apps in nice GUI friendly manner, I explain a bit in detail in the odroid thread in other handhelds section of this forum. It's a pain, but not impossible from what I gather.

Hacking it in isn't impossible, I can do it myself on 1.5 devices, havn't completely figured it out on 2.1 yet (they use a google talk backround service to talk to the google market server). If the propritary apps are not licenced and freely distributed google will come down on you as some have found out with official cease and desist letters. But that's the only bad thing with that I think.

 

[Prometheus]

Pardon me if I'm misreading it, but somehow that sounds, to me, to be less suitable for the inexperienced user than Angstrom is...

 

[SNESFAN]

Pardon me if I'm misreading it, but somehow that sounds, to me, to be less suitable for the inexperienced user than Angstrom is...

yes hacking it in would be, that's why one would need a pre-made image to slap in the pandora, could be flashed just like I would imagine angstrom updates would be.

anyway... looking into it out of my own curiosity I ran across this
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/android-devices-crave-googles-attention/

google has certain hardware requirements for them to bless off on your device officially, the pandora doesn't meet their requirements so this whole idea is moot unless they do what Odroid did with 3rd party market, it works, but whatever... I'd like to see it, but I doubt it will happen.

EDIT: needs accelerometer, GPS, cell modem (cleared by FCC), 4 standard android navigation buttons, probably other things the pandora doesn't have as well.

 

[el_pango]

Back on the topic of obsolescence, it wasn't so long ago that TV-top consoles had a sixteenth or an eighth of the RAM a Pandora has, were capable of fewer raw triangles per second*, and some of the games still managed to come out pretty good (I am still madly in love with Disgaea, Skies Of Arcadia, Power Stone 2, Burnout 3 and Dark Cloud II, for examples, and sure, they look 'low-res' next to today's consoles, but they still look -quite- good).

Enter the Pandora with stats that suggest it should be able to keep pace with** a PS2 in the hands of a capable developer, right around the time the homebrew scene has started to gel and mature a bit, and you have all these people who have had time to experiment and get comfortable with doing 3D content and who have gotten comfortable working in small-to-medium sized teams over the internet desperately waiting for it. Far from being obsolete, I think it's launching at a good time.

*yes, I am aware this is usually a marketing number.
**keep pace with, not emulate.
***yes, I'm aware that every title I mentioned had paid staff, specialized software and a budget, but in all seriousness, this level of quality is definitely not out of reach of indies anymore.

 

[Alpha2]

T..... M..... I.

 

[Gerix]

The Pandora presents an interesting and open platform for developers.

Edited for decency.

 

[quadomatic]

That's nasty...I'll thank you not to share next time

 

[coisman]

Some new information has come to my attention.
Apparently the new smartphones that are coming out in June are going to feature 720p HD playback with HDMI output, as well as 720p video recording. The Samsung Galaxy S is already confirmed to support 720p h264, and it's widely assumed that Sprint's HTC Evo 4g will as well.

This happened even faster than I thought it would

 

[Prometheus]

I'm glad that the telephone you wanted has become available.

 

[rabidpoobear]

Apparently the new smartphones that are coming out in June are going to feature 720p HD playback with HDMI output, as well as 720p video recording.

Oh great, more laggy tear/smear-laden pixels than before! seriously, cell phones and webcams SUCK at recording videos. their sensors are laughably small and their lenses suck. just because you're recording more resolution of a crappy light path don't make it less crappy.

I bet they record it at 15 or 24 fps too, and don't even manage that half the time.

 

[rabidpoobear]

if the Pandora has under 2200 unique apps after the first few months then it's failed ,

I don't quite get this new trend to try to count the number of apps available..
apps vary in size and quality and the amount of effort involved in making them so much that it just doesn't seem to make any sense at all.

nice misquote there.

This isn't directed at you, but the whole number thing in general.

jb0yx, you misunderstood me. I was mocking crade for screwing up his quote and having it say that I said those numbers.
I had no issue with the quote itself. Just his quotefail.

 

[crackerjacker]

I think I read somewhere that Apple was filing for a patent on a game conroller add-on to the iPhone. The drawings looked pretty tight and whole thing, iPhone docked with controller, should fit in a pocket.

 

[LineOf7s]

Welcome to 20-odd days ago.

http://icontrolpad.com/

 

[crackerjacker]

Welcome to 20-odd days ago.

http://icontrolpad.com/

Yep, that would be it. Shame it does not have an analog stick, but I guess you could just use the tilt for any proportional control you need.