Pandora - Obsolete?

[mali]

^ The crucial difference to other gaming handhelds is, that the Pandora attracted many people from outside the gaming community, myself included. According to peca's survey, roughly half of the people are gamers, the other half are UMPC/MID folks. I came here from the Maemo community, like many others. I've never owned a gaming handheld and never will

 

[Sugar_Kane]

*points at Mali and emits body snatchers scream*

Spoiler

 

[Pleng]

Actually, your post reminds me, Sugar_Kane... The GP2X didn't attract this sort of "It's not high end enough!" chatter, did it? Or at least, I don't remember it doing so...

That may be. But to be fair, when OP were taking preorders they did bill it as 'the most powerful handheld in existance' or something along those lines. And they didnt make you wait 2 years between preorder and delivery. In which time any hardware would clealy fall off the cutting edge.

 

[philly]

I havent read every post here so sorry if Im repeating an older point (not that that ever happens here :lol: )

I have no problem with the question of obselecence of the pandora`s cpu... The claim that it will be the most powerful handheld on the market is obsolete...

Show me something better and factor in the screen, battery life, form factor, controls, idealism, the dream, the love, the frustration, the emotion, the open scource...y...ness, the crazyness, the quality of devs and community and you can sign me up for it... Ill come with you... We`ll buy it together then well go to the pub and get drunk together... It`ll be brilliant!!! :lol:

There is one more stipulation though... The Guy who dreampt it up must release videos of himself from the roof of his house and have a penchant for booze and silly hats!!!

 

[kev187]

I havent read every post here so sorry if Im repeating an older point (not that that ever happens here :lol: )

I have no problem with the question of obselecence of the pandora`s cpu... The claim that it will be the most powerful handheld on the market is obsolete...

Show me something better and factor in the screen, battery life, form factor, controls, idealism, the dream, the love, the frustration, the emotion, the open scource...y...ness, the crazyness, the quality of devs and community and you can sign me up for it... Ill come with you... We`ll buy it together then well go to the pub and get drunk together... It`ll be brilliant!!! :lol:

There is one more stipulation though... The Guy who dreampt it up must release videos of himself from the roof of his house and have a penchant for booze and silly hats!!!

+1

The Pandora is more powerful than....

The Wiz
Dingoo
PSP & PSP go
Nintendo DS

On par hardware with many of the now "super smart phones" but they all lack any type of proper gaming controls....

Sooooooooooooo its not Obsolete & actually is THE MOST POWERFUL GAMING CONSOLE!

I think we are all fine

Not to mention the open source makes it soo much more powerful for developers!

 

[quadomatic]

The GP2X didn't attract this sort of "It's not high end enough!" chatter, did it? Or at least, I don't remember it doing so...

I wouldn't know for certain since I didn't get my GP2X till late in the game, but considering what was out at the time, I doubt people would since it was a huge jump from the GP32

 

[kev187]

I'm being dangerously tempted to buy a dsi xl while I'm waiting for my pandora, as I'm probably near the back of the list and I'm starting to get the itch. Would I be making a horrible, eggy mistake?

I just replaced my DSlite wth a DSi XL & love it. I would not put it in the same category as the pandora aside from the fact its portable. The nintendo games are fun, the wifi and online gaming is top notch! Games are cheap & the dsiware shop games for $2, $5, and $8 are fun. I mostly play mario kart online, so its a fun system.

There are some cards out there for emulation on it. I ordered an iplayer that has a extra processor in it + a micro sd slot. Its seems you can do most 8-bit & 16-bit game systems along with some neogeo & mame. Its not perfect considering the hardware limitations of the DS. But I ordered a iplayer for $40 just to try it out.

I am around 3500 on the waiting list for my Pandora.. just ordered this past Fall, so my DSi XL will keep me happy for a while :-D I am still every day enjoying my Gp32X also.... I am stilll & always impressed with what that handheld does.. the Pandora is only going to be better!

 

[chame]

there is allways the posibility to create new mobos with upgraded mem, cpu, etc and customers could be able buy just it and reuse the current case, controls, keymat, screen, battery...

maybe in couple of years

 

[alucart1984]

<SNIP>
And I think you are missing the whole point. Once a cell phone gets "obsolete" people stop supporting it. That community is very volatile. In cell phones, everyone just wants the newest, greatest thing. But you can almost guarantee that the Pandora will be supported for many years. Just like the PSP... that hardware is terrible compared to current-day hardware, yet there are still people in the homebrew scene writing new / exciting software every day. Pandora's scene will be like that, except massively better. Or the DS... don't even get me started on how "obsolete" that hardware is. Do you consider the DSi and the DSiLL themselves to be obsolete? I think the millions upon millions of sales of those devices will beg to differ with you.
Anyway, it's clear that you have no perspective at all on this issue, I'm not sure why I even bothered replying. I should've just said ... "+1 to Exo".

Well said!!! What I put in bold really shows how the Pandora is not obsolete. Why does the Nintendo DS sale so well? It has a huge library of software that can please just about anybody. If the Pandora can keep getting things like Quake 3, emulators, and countless other ports/remakes then it will continue to sale. I haven't preordered the Pandora but I have not considered another device just yet because everything I have looked at is missing a key feature that I think the Pandora does best......Gaming Controls. I tried playing a NES emulator on my friends iPhone 3Gs and it just didn't feel natural. It worked but I couldn't see myself playing Ninja Gaiden 2 all the way through on the iPhone. But if you look at the games that are made for the iPhone like Tap Tap Revenge or some of the (good)racing games for the iPhone then you will see how the iPhone has good potential when utilizing the hardware.

 

[rabidpoobear]

? I think the millions upon millions of sales of those devices will beg to differ with you.

Well said!!! What I put in bold really shows how the Pandora is not obsolete. Why does the Nintendo DS sale so well? It has a huge library of software that can please just about anybody. If the Pandora can keep getting things like Quake 3, emulators, and countless other ports/remakes then it will continue to sale.
[/quote]
I and other developers are just sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Pandora to come out so we can start writing software for it...
We as an open source community really have the potential to make a pretty disruptive technology here. Take for example these two devices:

Spoiler

Kaoss Pad 3 Peterson Strobe Tuner

Torpor or I are probably going to end up making a software version of the Kaoss Pad. Except it will be infinitely better because it won't have limited memory / loop lengths, the display will be higher resolution, etc, etc. And since we have USB Host on Pandora, you can easily integrate it with a cheap midi controller and get even more buttons/knobs (and of course you could still use the Pandora keyboard / nubs / d-pad / touch screen if you don't have a midi controller.) As for the strobe tuner, I personally want this app, so I'll probably write it myself (I doubt many people even know what strobe tuners are - but they're expensive normally.) And most of my Pandora software will be donationware, so free if you don't have the cash or don't like the software (but I'd hope you'd leave constructive feedback if you think it sucks)

I'm going to be using Pandora a lot for live music (I hope), so I'll probably come out with a lot of software related to this. Same with PIM stuff. So all we really need to do is have a few developers who are interested in the things that you are interested in, and lots of kickass apps will hopefully appear.

SO yeah, it's not obsolete so long as there are developers making apps for it. And I'm not about to let a device I dropped $330 on go obsolete the second I get it. True, the apps may only be useful for me and a few select people, but for my purposes, it won't be obsolete until something else comes out that is as open and has as good of a community as Pandora.

 

[torpor]

How to make sure the Pandora doesn't go obsolete any time soon: ship it with a compiler onboard.

End of thread.

 

[Exophase]

Obsolescence in the technical world means that something is no longer supported by the manufacturer. It'd be pretty awful is this occurred before the product was even shipped.

But in common usage (and this thread) it's used to mean that some other product has superseded it and the original product no longer has a commercial advantage. When a manufacturer releases a new product that supersedes one of their existing ones they'll often make the old one obsolete as well. But people tend to use it to mean it informally, just that "there's something better available."

I think we all know this usage is what the OP means, I think it's kind of silly to mince words on this.

 

[mahousaru]

Missing enough details and a keyboard!

http://www.handlewithlinux.com/pocket-hd-multimedia-dream-device

 

[Wootson]

Missing enough details and a keyboard!

http://www.handlewithlinux.com/pocket-hd-multimedia-dream-device

Missing:

• Keyboard
• Nubs (rub 'em!)
• Impressive community like GP32X and BeagleBoard
• Potential software library like Pandora

I think it looks like a tuned Wonderswan!

 

[noxstryx]

Software will make all the difference, just as it does on say the iphone vs. say the droid. Hardware wise Droid is generally better, but iphone has the software (read original games/easy to use app). This i one reason i haven't ordered a pandora yet, i'm waiting to see what the community does.


That being said, however, i do hope that talks of an upgraded pandora(read: slightly faster processor) will happen quickly once the pandora is released. The form factor really sells me but the specs make me weary, but once i see all the sweet software this gets i might change my mind.

 

[crade]

^ Marketting makes the difference in iphone vs. droid. Apple is a marketting genius.

 

[SNESFAN]

Selling the same product for the past 3 years or at least the same OS on similar iphones/ipods to the droid's 6 month or android's almost 1.5 years maturity. If I remember right, the apple app store was about the same level of maturity at this point in development as android is now.

Both OS's app stores have their advantages, google backed their app store with money "prizes" for top apps to build their library, while apple had the advantage of being the first of it's kind. (homebrew to the everyday non-geek users) I do have to say the pandora will probably see some nice software but I see it being very stale in comparison (variety outside of emulators) to either apple app store liabrary or android market. I would even go as far as to say the success won't even be as high as the webOS app catalog. (they have roughly 2,200 http://www.precentral.net/app-gallery/app-catalog/)

I see the basic essentials being here with our app store, emulators and ports of main stream open source projects, but I seriously doubt we'll be hitting much higher than 1k apps, if we can even make it that high. You can argue quality over quantity, but as much as I love the community here, I'm sure we will have our fair share of crapware in whatever app market we come up with, just like every other platform out there. There's alot of crap software on both apple and android, but there are some real quality apps and emulators to be had.

I've been screaming this for a little less than a year now, we should really have an official OP android port and support so we can enjoy android's success rather than compete with it. It might not be everyone's favorite OS but nobody can deny the software library being there already and it's main focus is already in mobile handsets. They have app numbers that we will honestly never reach. If anything have a dual boot option, or official OP support so the consumer can decide which way they want to go should be seriously considered.

I've seen the demo of the WIP android port, but it doesn't appear to be officially from OP nor can I find any progress on it. Everytime I mention something about it it kinda of just gets ignored, I don't expect this to be any different. I start to post as just a quick reply but I guess I got caught up in a rant.

 

[rabidpoobear]

I think the android port was just a quick and dirty port by one developer just to see if it would boot, not a concerted effort to get it compatible / stable by a group of dev's who will stick around (no offense meant to original porter, that's just how I saw it.)

 

[mali]

@jb0yx
The problem with Android is that it's not really optimized for games. That vid of Quake 3 running on Odroid I saw a while ago was a real downer. They don't even use dynamic lighting from what I've seen.

 

[paddy]

That device looks quite nice but no one thought it out properly ,in many respects it is a good device ,the power and graphics look good and the refined OS is lightyears away from what we will be getting on the Pandora but in time the Pandora OS will look better ,really i have been going on about this for ages now ,we need a task manager for the simple OS for the Pandora ,i want to have radio playing in the background ,i want to at any time press like a home button/ps3/360 and choose media to run in the background while running emulators apps or web browsers and at no time should the media stop to load an app,music or whatever.Show that off and people will want want want ,i know this is all in the future but we all know about foundations right !