Pandora Recieved

[likwidoxigen]

Ok, so far it's going really great, some small issues with corrupted pnd's etc but overall a good experience on the software.

CASE: So the case took forever and we all know that. However, that slick of paint down the parts really made a huge difference. I've got the slight bowing of the bezel under the LCD screen. Overall the case is great though. There're some uneven gaps but all the buttons work great and so does the keypad.

NUBS: So I'm a bit of a nub hater. The only "nubs" I've ever loved were the xbox 360 joysticks. However, the nubs on the Pandora are almost decent. HOWEVER.... My nubs need to be reset in order for them to have the foggiest idea what freaking axis they're on. My left nub goes diagonally on a "physical left" or "physical right" and with my right nub the "center" shifts physically left. After a nub reset they're good for about 20 minutes. After that it goes back to shit.

KEYPAD: I haven't seen anyone talking about this, however the keypad is fantastic. Higher quality than the similarly made palm pre/pixie and great to type on. The keypad layout is not bad at all, once you get used to it you can do basic editing with no problem at all.

CONTROLS: The gaming controls on my unit are 100% rock f*ing solid amazing better than any big-box unit I've bought. The feel and travel are perfect the only unit that comes close is my original Gameboy Advance which had a particularly snappy and solid tactile feel. PSX, SNES, NES are all a sheer pleaasure to play with these keys. SNK Baseball Stars is my current NES throwback fav.

SOUND: Love it through the headphones. I've got some huge everglide s500's and it drives them up to solid volumes with only minimal distortion. They built-in speakers are your standard tinny fare, a bit better than you'd get from a DS or a PSP. If you like those speakers then you'll love the ones from the Pandora even more. And seriously the output to headphones is fantastic I'm really impressed with it.

WIFI: It's good, it picks up what's around pretty well. If you have a problem a "sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart" clears it right up and is no fault of the OP team. Network Manager is a pain in the butt.

BATTERY: Gotta be honest. I haven't put it through much but it seems to last a goodly bit I'll have more on this in a while.

Now all that's on the to do is to get healthy so I can get the Pandora down to my studio and get some solid photos of it.

I'm really loving this thing. FFVII on the go and tons and tons of emulation really makes it enjoyable. Currently I'm working on a braindead (checksum based) pnd updating directly from the Pandora until someone builds a slicker app for it (or I get some time to do so).

 

[carlgeorge]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

 

[fade]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

 

[ahahah]

NUBS: So I'm a bit of a nub hater. The only "nubs" I've ever loved were the xbox 360 joysticks. However, the nubs on the Pandora are almost decent. HOWEVER.... My nubs need to be reset in order for them to have the foggiest idea what freaking axis they're on. My left nub goes diagonally on a "physical left" or "physical right" and with my right nub the "center" shifts physically left. After a nub reset they're good for about 20 minutes. After that it goes back to shit.

oh shit.
someone know what's the matter with that?

After a nub reset they're good for about 20 minutes

so it is impossible to play correctly more than 20 minutes??
it's a serious problem. i've bought the pandora exclusively for games

 

[torpor]

Calibrate them on every boot. Then use the nub control panel to reset them after you play a few emu's .. it seems some games aren't good about resetting them.

 

[Mithrildor]

Is this for all pandoras or only for those with one-nub units? Is this fixable? Cause Im going to play for longer than 20 minutes with my nubs

 

[Bosbeetle]

The nubs pretty okay it really depends on the games you play. (in quake they seem horrible) the thing I hate the most is that its not very consistent sometimes the're briliant and other times the're a bit meh.

The nubs are still my main mouse source, I hardly use the touchscreen (will do more when scumvm gets fixed )

 

[carlgeorge]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

You cant charge it and have it turned of. The Omap3 is a phone type chip and phones are also always one when they are being charged (however is some sort of minimal mode. So its not a bug its just the way it works.

Wifi of and sleep mode is a nice solution I use it like that all the time.

 

[mali]

^ lol, that's normal, check the online manual

[You're ninja'd, stupid]

 

[alucart1984]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

You cant charge it and have it turned of. The Omap3 is a phone type chip and phones are also always one when they are being charged (however is some sort of minimal mode. So its not a bug its just the way it works.

Wifi of and sleep mode is a nice solution I use it like that all the time.

I am sorry but almost every single phone I have used has been able to be charged while the device is completely off. I currently have a Blackberry Tour and had a Curve before that it both charge just fine with the phone completely off. My Fiance's G1 charges just fine while being off too I know that for a face cause she lets the thing go completely dead before she remembers to charge it.

 

[elwing]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

You cant charge it and have it turned of. The Omap3 is a phone type chip and phones are also always one when they are being charged (however is some sort of minimal mode. So its not a bug its just the way it works.

Wifi of and sleep mode is a nice solution I use it like that all the time.

I am sorry but almost every single phone I have used has been able to be charged while the device is completely off. I currently have a Blackberry Tour and had a Curve before that it both charge just fine with the phone completely off. My Fiance's G1 charges just fine while being off too I know that for a face cause she lets the thing go completely dead before she remembers to charge it.

nope, all my phones (and most of the phones) needs to turn on for charging, but phones generally have some kind of minimal charging OS, rather than their full OS, and the same should be possible on the pandora, but a tiny charging OS does not exist, thus it boots the full OS...

 

[carlgeorge]

Cheers for the answers guys. I did read some of the on-line manual but I never found that pearl of info, so thanks for that.

It does seem odd that you can't turn it off and plug it in to charge overnight like you would any other hand-held, but if that is the way it is then that's what I'll live with. At least it isn't broken, I even reinstalled the firmware/OS.

 

[Asiyura]

All my phones have some kind of mini os launched saying "charging" when plugged to the charger.
They're going to make some minimal os for charging. But right now, they're working on getting the main os working

 

[femngi]

The problem with the nubs seems to be software not hardware.

It's off topic but I don't understand the abuse Network Manager gets. I can't think of anything which offers the same range of features that works nearly as well.

 

[likwidoxigen]

Calibrate them on every boot. Then use the nub control panel to reset them after you play a few emu's .. it seems some games aren't good about resetting them.

That's what I've been doing. it makes them alot better. I also found that mini-menu treats them better than xfce. Like if i use Firefox through mini menu instead of xfce they stay solid for a good while. Also zodttd's psx emulator treats them good as well.

The nubs pretty okay it really depends on the games you play. (in quake they seem horrible) the thing I hate the most is that its not very consistent sometimes the're briliant and other times the're a bit meh.

The nubs are still my main mouse source, I hardly use the touchscreen (will do more when scumvm gets fixed )

I've had the same issues with quake. I don't like the game much so it's easy to skip out on.

The problem with the nubs seems to be software not hardware.

It's off topic but I don't understand the abuse Network Manager gets. I can't think of anything which offers the same range of features that works nearly as well.

I agree about the nubs.
But with regards to network manager you're right that there is nothing that offeres the same features or works as well, but there's also no software package I know that has as strange and hard to diagnose bugs as Network Manager. It's nice that a simple network manager restart fixes it but when you have different outcomes for the same event it just makes no freaking sense. Like if I go from low power mode to normal xfce it wont connect about 1/5 times. No rhyme or reason just seems about 20ish percent of the time it won't connect. It's the inconsistency that I hate on it for.

 

[alucart1984]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

You cant charge it and have it turned of. The Omap3 is a phone type chip and phones are also always one when they are being charged (however is some sort of minimal mode. So its not a bug its just the way it works.

Wifi of and sleep mode is a nice solution I use it like that all the time.

I am sorry but almost every single phone I have used has been able to be charged while the device is completely off. I currently have a Blackberry Tour and had a Curve before that it both charge just fine with the phone completely off. My Fiance's G1 charges just fine while being off too I know that for a face cause she lets the thing go completely dead before she remembers to charge it.

nope, all my phones (and most of the phones) needs to turn on for charging, but phones generally have some kind of minimal charging OS, rather than their full OS, and the same should be possible on the pandora, but a tiny charging OS does not exist, thus it boots the full OS...

I like to know what phones you are talking about? My blackberry is completely off and it charges fine. Nothing pops up on the screen and no reaction to me pressing buttons other than the power button then I get a 5 minute+ boot time which shows me that the phone was definitely off. I do understand what you mean about minimal charging OS as my fiances old Motorola W490 would popup on the outside LCD saying "Charging" so technically it was off. I had a sprint 6700 also that charged while off. I could completely shut it off. It mainly has to do with how the charging controls are laid out on the PCB. If you look at the TouchBook you will see it has to be charged while on. The tablet part of it has to be on to charge, but the keyboard part charges when plugged in. People have taken the battery from the Tablet part and plugged it into the charging circuit and have gotten the Tablet part to charge correctly. People that have the Tablet part only have many issues with the charging/battery life aspect of the tablet.

 

[mali]

^ No need to discuss this further, even if you don't believe it, phones are on when charging. Sometimes you only recognize it by looking at the charging LED if the manufacturer decides to not put a charging animation on the screen. Plug it in and you see a delay till the LED goes on. That's the time it takes to boot the "mini OS"

 

[WizardStan]

The minimal charge OS doesn't have to do anything. There doesn't have to be any bells or whistles to let you know that it's "on". You could plug it in, absolutely nothing happens, and it is still "on", you just don't know it. Most tend to at least turn on an LED or something though. Strange that your Blackberry doesn't, since mine does.

 

[vadsamoht]

I've got to agree with everything you say here. Mine is exactly the same in many respects. My problem is with charging.

Out of interest, whats the prob?

Sorry I should have elaborated more.

For some reason the only way I can get mine to charge without it been 'on' is to turn the wifi off and put it into sleep mode.

Everything other permutation I have tried simply turns it 'on' if it is plugged into the mains. I have even tried 'shut down' with the power lead already attached and it'll still restart itself.

You cant charge it and have it turned of. The Omap3 is a phone type chip and phones are also always one when they are being charged (however is some sort of minimal mode. So its not a bug its just the way it works.

Wifi of and sleep mode is a nice solution I use it like that all the time.

I am sorry but almost every single phone I have used has been able to be charged while the device is completely off. I currently have a Blackberry Tour and had a Curve before that it both charge just fine with the phone completely off. My Fiance's G1 charges just fine while being off too I know that for a face cause she lets the thing go completely dead before she remembers to charge it.

nope, all my phones (and most of the phones) needs to turn on for charging, but phones generally have some kind of minimal charging OS, rather than their full OS, and the same should be possible on the pandora, but a tiny charging OS does not exist, thus it boots the full OS...

I like to know what phones you are talking about? My blackberry is completely off and it charges fine. Nothing pops up on the screen and no reaction to me pressing buttons other than the power button then I get a 5 minute+ boot time which shows me that the phone was definitely off. I do understand what you mean about minimal charging OS as my fiances old Motorola W490 would popup on the outside LCD saying "Charging" so technically it was off. I had a sprint 6700 also that charged while off. I could completely shut it off. It mainly has to do with how the charging controls are laid out on the PCB. If you look at the TouchBook you will see it has to be charged while on. The tablet part of it has to be on to charge, but the keyboard part charges when plugged in. People have taken the battery from the Tablet part and plugged it into the charging circuit and have gotten the Tablet part to charge correctly. People that have the Tablet part only have many issues with the charging/battery life aspect of the tablet.

Most, if not all modern devices implement runs some sort of very minimal OS when charging, as fade said. Just because there's nothing showing on the screen doesn't mean its not running. I must admit to know nothing about the TouchBook though.

Nothing of interest really to say about phones, I just want to see how crazy-big a quote cascade this will become.