SoC Poll - What's most important for you?

[Screeny]

I'm currently using a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with Intel BayTrail Technology. It's a really good CPU/GPU! Powerful with great graphics and good performance. 

With x86 (btw, it's a 64 bit processor ...) there will be tons of software available. Games, emulators, webbrowsers, ... and many other things.

As you can see in my spreadsheet many games are working (yeah, my tablet is running windows ... but that isn't the important thing. Just look which games are playable .... and realize the power behind Intels newest CPU)

Click here for an overview: http://viehl.ch/tablet-gaming

 

[Lafazar]

My suggestion (and hope) is to do a true Pandora compatible successor with ARM now and create an x86 device with a standard debian installation as a separate product line later (incompatible to Pandora software but still reusing the case and PCB design of course). There is obviously demand for a x86 device, but there are still quite a few unknowns like power consumption etc. It makes sense to wait a little longer until there is more real-world experience with x86 chips in this power range.

This way everyone can get what they want.

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

One of the completely amazing and redeeming features of the Pandora is the battery life. Hands down.

Nothing like playing a game for HOURS and realising you have plenty of battery left.

I have a feeling if battery life got under 10 hours it would lose a lot of it's magic. For that reason I'd stick with ARM.

 

[ekianjo]

I hesitated to write more or less this, as this is obvious. A choice has to be made.

Yeha, and I'm not sure if it was necessary to ask everyone what they are thinking about X or Y in terms of SoC. If ED had simply said "oh, I've chosen OMAP5, and that's it, and it's going to go in production soon and too late to change anything", well I'm pretty sure everyone would have more or less accepted it and shut up. Instead of that, we've been wasting one week in garbage threads discussing the pros and cons of ARM vs x86, and split the community in two, and potentially put notaz's role in jeopardy.

Sometimes open discussions are NOT productive, seriously guys.

So much waste of energy going on.

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

This discussion calls to mind that quote from the guy who invented the car

"If I'd asked what the people wanted they would've said 'faster horses".

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I'm currently using a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with Intel BayTrail Technology. It's a really good CPU/GPU! Powerful with great graphics and good performance. 

With x86 (btw, it's a 64 bit processor ...) there will be tons of software available. Games, emulators, webbrowsers, ... and many other things.

As you can see in my spreadsheet many games are working (yeah, my tablet is running windows ... but that isn't the important thing. Just look which games are playable .... and realize the power behind Intels newest CPU)

Click here for an overview: http://viehl.ch/tablet-gaming

Then just use your Venue 8 for these games.  Why do we need another x86 toy?

 

[Screeny]

I'm currently using a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with Intel BayTrail Technology. It's a really good CPU/GPU! Powerful with great graphics and good performance. 

With x86 (btw, it's a 64 bit processor ...) there will be tons of software available. Games, emulators, webbrowsers, ... and many other things.

As you can see in my spreadsheet many games are working (yeah, my tablet is running windows ... but that isn't the important thing. Just look which games are playable .... and realize the power behind Intels newest CPU)

Click here for an overview: http://viehl.ch/tablet-gaming

Then just use your Venue 8 for these games.  Why do we need another x86 toy?

Why do I need a ARM toy? I don't think that ARM is the best choice for a mobile game console. If you choose x86 you can even emulate ARM (but the other way around it's more tricky ...) 

And if I read that we want to use Android ... wuuuaah! ... Android was a good idea but in fact it's just a graveyard of messy code and somebody has to fix many things ... because Android is a OS for multiple (and often low price) platforms. Most games are crap or stuffed with in-app-advertisment. You have to wait for updates  - if there are any at all - ... many things I don't like. 

Why don't we just use a system that's working - like x86? Debian is really stable on x86 and many devs can work with this architecture. (And yeah, maybe a Windows dual boot would be possible to ... much more options for our little device!)

 

[fusion_power]

I'm currently using a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with Intel BayTrail Technology. It's a really good CPU/GPU! Powerful with great graphics and good performance. 

With x86 (btw, it's a 64 bit processor ...) there will be tons of software available. Games, emulators, webbrowsers, ... and many other things.

As you can see in my spreadsheet many games are working (yeah, my tablet is running windows ... but that isn't the important thing. Just look which games are playable .... and realize the power behind Intels newest CPU)

Click here for an overview: http://viehl.ch/tablet-gaming

Battery life?

Sometimes open discussions are NOT productive, seriously guys.

That's Democracy. ^^

 

[Screeny]

Battery life?

 

Hi Fusi

About 8 to 10 hours.

Enough for me ....

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

Venue 8 battery life

Unfortunately, battery life isn't great and Mashable says it "completely fails," eking out only 7.5 hours in their tests

http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/venue/8/

The world doesn't need anymore loud, scorching to the touch overheating x86 devices.

 

[Screeny]

It depends on your use. If you just want to play some SNES/PSX games ... there is battery life > 8 hours. (I tested it.)

The device does not have any fans - so there is no noise. Overheating could be a problem but just if you want to play games with hugh graphics (like Skyrim). 

 

[ivanovic]

Hey guys, please do not forget that the A15 architecture can also be extremely power hungry. Why are you following the old myth that ARM will be more efficient because it is ARM? Just looking at the specs they look very similar regarding energy consumption with the x86 possibly being in lead in some cases. Here it would be great to have some test board which allows comparing the usage with rather "real life" tests. Just following marketing talk in any direction won't help ED.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

He's, Screeny, the one telling everyone Pyra should be x86 without due weights....

 

[sepulep]

@power vs battery:

battery, big time. The SoC will always be slower than the next big thing..

@arm or x86

ARM, for compatibility with pandora stuff, but I must say, maybe being able to some windows gaming in a virtual machine has some appeal!

 

[SeeThruHead]

The benefits are myriad and pretty obvious. Just need to consider what will have to be traded in order to get them and whether that trade makes sense for the pyra device. I don't think I'll be buying any arm devices in 2014, but that doesn't mean it's not a good choice for what ed what's to accomplish with the pyra.

 

[_jr_]

One of the completely amazing and redeeming features of the Pandora is the battery life. Hands down.


Nothing like playing a game for HOURS and realising you have plenty of battery left.


I have a feeling if battery life got under 10 hours it would lose a lot of it's magic. For that reason I'd stick with ARM.

It might well be, that Bay Trail has the upper hand in the battery life department among the current SoC offerings.


I voted battery life, open source, arm, architecture. I can live easily with compromises in each point, but to me it is important to be as far away from mainstream (i.e. Android, X86) as possible (while still having a completely assembled product, since my soldering skills are crap). I can barely follow the amount of messages on this board the Pyra announcement created, and most of them are rehashes of old arguments (and - worst - I feel compelled to participate and waste your and my time). While it was already slightly difficult to ignore the Android fanboys most (to me) interesting information on these boards has been drowned out by the X86 discussion. I'd totally like to run original Deus Ex (one of the few newer games I actually like) on the go, but losing the current Pandora community is too high a price.

 

[EvilDragon]

It depends on your use. If you just want to play some SNES/PSX games ... there is battery life > 8 hours. (I tested it.)

The device does not have any fans - so there is no noise. Overheating could be a problem but just if you want to play games with hugh graphics (like Skyrim).

Well, but with a battery that's bigger than the Pandora one, SNES games should be more than 10 hours :/

 

[God Ginrai]

yeah, my tablet is running windows ... but that isn't the important thing.

 Actually, it kind of does. If you try to tell people this stuff will work because it is the same (or similar) chipset, and then it doesn't because we either don't run Windows, or can't run it, then all that information is doing is giving people false expectations so that they will vote your way.

Why do I need a ARM toy? I don't think that ARM is the best choice for a mobile game console. If you choose x86 you can even emulate ARM (but the other way around it's more tricky ...) 

And if I read that we want to use Android ... wuuuaah! ... Android was a good idea but in fact it's just a graveyard of messy code and somebody has to fix many things ... because Android is a OS for multiple (and often low price) platforms. Most games are crap or stuffed with in-app-advertisment. You have to wait for updates  - if there are any at all - ... many things I don't like. 

Why don't we just use a system that's working - like x86? Debian is really stable on x86 and many devs can work with this architecture. (And yeah, maybe a Windows dual boot would be possible to ... much more options for our little device!)

I could care less about Android. There are only 3 things on Android that truly interest me: BakaReader, Andjong, and Guilty Dragon (I'm a big .hack// fan) However, I still choose ARM. So don't just go assuming that everyone who wants ARM is an android fanboi.

-God Ginrai

 

[mclien]

I'm quite unsure what to vote and this why:

Being a paranoid and not a gamer, I'm looking for an open portable device (or more prezice an open, personal IT infrastructe, which can exist whithout internet and cloud things, so I'm in controll of my data as much as possible. Don't get me wrong, I love the nternet as source of information, colaboration and community, but I don't want my personal data depent on it's availability).

And at the moment pandora/pyra meet my goals best. The Oportunity to "put my desktop PC into my pocket" is THE big step to prevent me from syncing data "around the world".

Perfect, of course, would be this: A little camshell design pocket PDA (with an LCD/E-Paper screen 160x240, using only the comanion CPUS of the SoC), a first docking step to "something" with a (foldable) keyboard and a bigger screen (something like the pyra will get) and a desktop docking station with dualscreen and an aditional GPU for CAD/Blender an stuff...

 

[comradekingu]

It depends on what kind of OS you are running, show some benches with linux, after the struggle of getting it to run on that tablet...