Returning Member Is Confused About New Handhelds

[Mofokubik]

I used to own a gp32 and was a regular user here, until I let a "friend" borrow it and it was "stolen" apparently, so I stopped posting because of an obvious loss in interest. Well here I am looking at getting another handheld, but now there are so many to choose from. Can any experienced users here tell me what they would recommend out of any of these handhelds? Are any of them backwards compatible with each other, and if not, which one would be the best in the long run for new updates, games, and software?

The wiz looks pretty nice, but I don't know if I like the idea of having 2 Dpads. The pandora looks amazing, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Post your experiences and thoughts about the newer handhelds. Any love, hate, or neutral comments/feedback is appreciated.

 

[adolobe]

I used to own a gp32 and was a regular user here, until I let a "friend" borrow it and it was "stolen" apparently, so I stopped posting because of an obvious loss in interest. Well here I am looking at getting another handheld, but now there are so many to choose from. Can any experienced users here tell me what they would recommend out of any of these handhelds? Are any of them backwards compatible with each other, and if not, which one would be the best in the long run for new updates, games, and software?

The wiz looks pretty nice, but I don't know if I like the idea of having 2 Dpads. The pandora looks amazing, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Post your experiences and thoughts about the newer handhelds. Any love, hate, or neutral comments/feedback is appreciated.

I have most of the handhelds that have sections here.

The wiz only has one Dpad the right hand side is 4 individual buttons that appears to be a Dpad but they are not connected.

As for all the handhelds it depends on what you want. I'll break it doen in pros and cons for you

-Pro-
Wiz
-touchscreen
-ability to play in direct sunlight

Dingoo A320 w Dingux
-Super low price
-Highly active community
-PSX performance on par with the Wiz with some games full speed already

Pandora
-Full keyboard
-Duel analog nubs
-Large screen
-Wifi & Bluetooth
-Possible N64 and DC emulators at launch at close to full speed

Now on to the Cons

Wiz
-High price
-Most developers say its processor is only slightly faster that the GP2x
-3d performance is almost non existent only really utilized right now in he GLQuke ports and a few demo's
-Diagonal screen tairing in some games on some emulators
-No neworking wifi/BT thoug a dongle has been shown no release date has been givin

Dingoo A320
-Cant play in sunlight
-Dingux is still early in development so you will have to duel boot the system
-No networking Wifi/BT
-Diagonal screen tearing in emulators on original firmware, some developers have solved the problem with there Dingux ports

Pandor
-Price
-No release date been pushed back a year now


Of course it really all depends on want you want to get from your system. The A320 is what most people currently prefer and its become really popular esp now after the PSX4All release.

Now for a discalmer, I just sold my A320(today) an opted to keep my wiz, Only because it cost so much and Im hopping that ZodTTD and Hardy will release an update to PSX4Wiz and the 3d hardware get more utilized. Im happy with my Wiz and it will hold me over until my Pandora arrives.

Final advice check out youtube watch videos for the systems and see first hand how they perform with the systems and games you want to play.

 

[gruso]

Hello. I'll assume you're not up on any of the developments since the GP32 was in production. Most of the interesting stuff happened before my time here, but I'll do my best.

Gamepark pretty much fell apart ("artistic differences" kind of thing) after the GP32, and some of the ex-Gamepark folk went on to form Gamepark Holdings (GPH). They produced the GP2X F100, and later the F200. These were fully compatible with each other, but not backwards compatible with the GP32.

The GP2X is discontinued now, replaced by the GP2X Wiz. Backwards compatibility with the F100/F200 is kind of advertised, but it is very conditional on how apps are coded. Most things need to be recompiled. Someone more knowledgable can elaborate on this if they like. The second Wiz d-pad is actually four separate buttons, a change implemented after community feedback. It still looks like a d-pad though.

The Dingoo is a Chinese product unrelated to GPH, and has a different architecture so is not compatible with anything. But it quickly got popular in these parts (with both users and devs) so it got its own subforum and has a nice dev scene happening. It's cheaper than the Wiz but offers less features.

The Pandora has no association with GPH either, it's been made by community members like Craigix and EvilDragon. It's an ARM based system, so in terms of architecture it's closer to the Wiz than the Dingoo, but still not compatible with either. It offers tons of features and power, and a higher price tag to match. We don't know if it's all it's cracked up to be, because the first batch hasn't gone out yet. Time will tell.

For most people, the decision comes down to budget. All systems will have great software & community support.

 

[skeezix]

Great summary gruso and well pointed out .. Cost versus features pretty much nails it.

Any idea of battery life and how annoying charging is between dingus and wiz? (I have Dev wiz and battey life is atrocious, but I'm not sure if that's Dev unit only.. Loses charge in 2 days with no use!)

jeff

 

[DaveC]

Great summary gruso and well pointed out .. Cost versus features pretty much nails it.

Any idea of battery life and how annoying charging is between dingus and wiz? (I have Dev wiz and battey life is atrocious, but I'm not sure if that's Dev unit only.. Loses charge in 2 days with no use!)

jeff

2-days? Something is terribly wrong with your battery or FW or something. It may be the proto unit but I don't remember too many early users complaining about the battery life. I have gone over 2 weeks on a charge with my Wiz with some gaming in between. If I didn't use it for a few days the battery meter doesn't even move. You must have a bum one.

-Pro-
Wiz
-touchscreen
-ability to play in direct sunlight

That is it? I would say the OLED screen is nice due to the better viewing angles, higher contrast, better response time (no LCD "ghosting") and black level that is second to none (good for those classic games).

The removable battery is nice as well as it makes replacement easier.

The Pandora will be superior to all of these though with the ability to emulate much more at full speed.

 

[crookedmouth]

Until The A320 gets UAE4All, I would add Amiga emulation as a pro to the Wiz. Of course the Pandora will have a full speed Amiga emulator at launch but the Amiga emulator gets the most use on my Wiz and over-clocked many of the games are playable. I usually don't even over-clock.

With zx-81 porting many emulators to the A320 as well as the Wiz, the ulra-cheap price of the Dingoo becomes even more alluring.

Just wanted to drop those points in.

 

[adolobe]

Great summary gruso and well pointed out .. Cost versus features pretty much nails it.
doesn't even move. You must have a bum one.

-Pro-
Wiz
-touchscreen
-ability to play in direct sunlight

That is it? I would say the OLED screen is nice due to the better viewing angles, higher contrast, better response time (no LCD "ghosting") and black level that is second to none (good for those classic games).

The removable battery is nice as well as it makes replacement easier.

The Pandora will be superior to all of these though with the ability to emulate much more at full speed.

I was kind of bunching the whole OLED into the ability to play in sunlight. Should of been more clear.

Also as for battery life, I must agree with DaveC that the battery just runs and runs. I've not charged my wiz in amost two weeks and I play maybe 30-60 mins aday at 800mhz in PSX4Wiz

One other thing I forgot to mention about the A320 is it has an FM receiver which is kind of cool

 

[slaanesh]

Great summary gruso and well pointed out .. Cost versus features pretty much nails it.

Any idea of battery life and how annoying charging is between dingus and wiz? (I have Dev wiz and battey life is atrocious, but I'm not sure if that's Dev unit only.. Loses charge in 2 days with no use!)

jeff

The A320 Dingoo has incredibly ace battery life. I've never actually had to specifically charge it as whenever i plug it into a USB port, it charges up (which is often as I am developing frequently).
I'd estimate that without charging you are looking at around 8-10 hours.

 

[klikklak]

I've been waiting for the Amiga and ST emu to get touchscreen support, that I still think is the main advantage for the wiz. Or at least the one I'm waiting most for. I suppose the rate of development is disappointing, but the product is still something nice to show to people ("oh look how sharp the screen is" is common to hear) and does most of the stuff I expected. But proper touchscreen support for the computer emus, please and thank you very much!

 

[skeezix]

Production Wiz's charge on USB correct? The Dingoo definately just charges on USB.

I ended up botchign my order for a prod Wiz so limp by on my dev ones, but they're crippled (relatively certain this is on purpose, so they're good enough to dev with, but not good enough long term to want to use.) So I'm debating picking up a production Wiz so I can actually enjoy it, but the Dingoo is so damned cheap it is tempting to pick up .. too many gadgets, not enough time

(Yes, touchscreen for the ST emu is coming, though my mouse force-reposition code was never really good; I shoudl also bring over Hatari, since it is a superior emu to mine .. mine was designed for the seriously low power days of 100mhz machines, but I cut a lot of corners in it to get there. Now that we have musclely machines, Hatari is a superior work.. just without a GUI designed for tiny screens.)

I need to do some BattleJEwels work, and I'm working on a new game, and a text advernture frontend for pandora, and OutcaST for PSP/GP2x/Wiz needs updating, and and and.. ahh, to have free time again

jeff

 

[klikklak]

Skeezix, thanks for your work on Outcast, I've loved it since gp32 but often the games I've really wanted to play (say Roadwar Europe) are too clunky on a virtual keyboard and mouse emulation.. but I just wanted to say thanks for all the work you've done! I think I should leech the automation disks again and give it a go once more.

 

[DaveC]

Production Wiz's charge on USB correct?

I ended up botchign my order for a prod Wiz so limp by on my dev ones, but they're crippled (relatively certain this is on purpose, so they're good enough to dev with, but not good enough long term to want to use.) So I'm debating picking up a production Wiz so I can actually enjoy it... jeff

Yes the Wiz charges while plugged into the USB port, that is the same as most devices these days.

I think it would be worth while for you to get a production Wiz. You could always sell the dev one, you could get something for it. On the final Wiz they improved the D-pad a bit, gave it a new metal flake black finish which doesn't show fingerprints as bad (I think the proto ones were plain black) and the battery life will be vastly better. Your HB stuff could use the touchescreen (which the other cheapoo one lacks) and you maybe even could play with the 3D chip for homebrew if you wanted. It would be nice to see the ST emu at least use the touchscreen for the virtual keyboard even if touchscreen mouse wasn't supported for awhile. Hatari sounds like it could be nice hopefully the sound is better than OutcaST.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I think it would be worth while for you to get a production Wiz. You could always sell the dev one, you could get something for it.

Or you could give it to another dev, I gave my pre-production unit to iPrice.

 

[skeezix]

Pretty good idea to give 'em away

DaveC -- how have you found the TS? from my dev units and talking to other devs pre-launch, he TS was pretty fishy .. ie: The large bulge on the right side and some goofs around the bottom and bottom left made mine pretty annoying to work with, and it seemed a common problem. Possibly coudl be worked out with some heuristics and coord scaling, but figured it wouldn't likely be a great result. Still, the game I'm sloowly working on now is opengl 2d (just use opengl for speed, scaling/zooming and rotation, but still a 2d game), and the Wiz is a faster unit (and admit it, we're all GP* fans

Hatari is a superior work in most ways, since it was designed for much beefier machines day one. When you never have to deal with runing <100mhz, it makes your life easier But its also a very well written piece .. better audio, better OS support (for multiple TOS versions and better integration with host OS including hard drive mounting onto filesystem etc), limited overscan support, etc. It needs a small-screen GUI and such, and needs a lot of control changes and magic to work on a handheld, but its a better foundation than my own work. (Which is hard to admit I must say I did build it for Wiz awhile back but I had a number of problems (random crashes and such) so need to do a better port, and it needs a lot of work to be usable. (ITs also a tonne slower than mine, so no underclocking it as much.)

Anyway, yeah, I'll probably re-order another release Wiz, but times are tight these days

jeff

 

[Alex.]

Ah, so the self-draining battery only affects prototypes, that's a little depressing but nevertheless nice to know I wonder if this is a battery-only problem, or if the hardware does something to tap it out too. Would using a production-run battery be enough to fix this? Probably not, but would be nice to check.

Oh, and does anyone actually have the old 0.17 (or earlier) firmware files? Would be nice to unbrick the old prototype with two dpads.

 

[shinneri]

I'd honestly suggest a Dingoo. I have both the Wiz and Dingoo, and it seems there's a lot more activity in the Dingoo community (probably thanks to the incredibly low cost). The screen isn't as good as the Wiz screen, but controls are significantly better. Long play sessions actually hurt on the Wiz because of the sharp curves on the face buttons.

Pandora's probably a good choice too, but who knows when you'd get it if you ordered one.

 

[skeezix]

(sorry to have hijacked a bit ..)

Checked some sales stats for one of my games on another platform, doing okay, so ordered (another) release version of the Wiz, should be around in a few days. woowoo

jeff

 

[adolobe]

(sorry to have hijacked a bit ..)

Checked some sales stats for one of my games on another platform, doing okay, so ordered (another) release version of the Wiz, should be around in a few days. woowoo

jeff

Awesome news about he new wiz and tat your games are selling good congrats

 

[DaveC]

(sorry to have hijacked a bit ..)

Checked some sales stats for one of my games on another platform, doing okay, so ordered (another) release version of the Wiz, should be around in a few days. woowoo

jeff

That is good that your games are selling. It is nice to know that your hard work pays off in good old cash.

You may want to have the place that you bought the Wiz from test it for bad pixels, a few have come with defective screens with a pixel plague that actually spreads as it is used.

Maybe Exophase would want your old one, his dev unit is permanently bricked. He had some good ideas of how to eliminate tearing but never did it due to a busted unit.


I have a launch Wiz and the touchscreen does have that bulge of the right about 5 mm wide. It works I just have to press hard in that spot to make it work. It seems to work fine everywhere else. I am not sure if new ones still do that. You may just want to make the keyboard not go all of the way to the right side.

 

[adolobe]

I have a launch Wiz and the touchscreen does have that bulge of the right about 5 mm wide. It works I just have to press hard in that spot to make it work. It seems to work fine everywhere else. I am not sure if new ones still do that. You may just want to make the keyboard not go all of the way to the right side.

My Wiz doesnt have the bulge on the screen but its not a lunch wiz it came loaded with the latest firmware and was purchased in August