Sold!

[Vince2501]

All right, with the announcement of bluetooth and the inevitable implementation of GPS. I will definitely buy Pandora. Retro games are nice, as is wifi, and possible Kaillera support for Metal Slug 3, and possible CPS 3 emulation (I value this more then N64 emulation to give you an idea). But it's really the GPS feature and 10 hour battery life that sold me on it.

Question for the developers: Does battery life vary during specific activities? Like say, listening to MP3's constantly will result in 9hour battery life, and etc.

 

[jakshep2]

All right, with the announcement of bluetooth and the inevitable implementation of GPS. I will definitely buy Pandora. Retro games are nice, as is wifi, and possible Kaillera support for Metal Slug 3, and possible CPS 3 emulation (I value this more then N64 emulation to give you an idea). But it's really the GPS feature and 10 hour battery life that sold me on it.

Question for the developers: Does battery life vary during specific activities? Like say, listening to MP3's constantly will result in 9hour battery life, and etc.

Apparently, if you play the music with the screen off, and the clamshell closed, the battery life will last for ~ 100 hours.

 

[sindbad]

No specifics are known yet. Obviously wifi and high brightness will eat some battery.

There has been speculation about a media player than can run when the pandora is suspended to ram.

 

[Vince2501]

Yeah, it was really battery life and lack of wifie that killed my interest in the GP2X. I swear, I spent almost $50 on batteries for the sucker, and it killed me to get maybe 2 & a 1/2 hours out of it.

 

[icurafu]

I must have spent less than 10 US on the 4 energisers that last way more than 3 hours when not overclocked.

 

[Tobriand]

Yeah, but GP2x battery life varies horribly from unit to unit, and over time. My original MK1 started off lasting ~4 hours on 2500mAh batteries; by the time I unfortunately lost it, it was only managing an hour, or slightly less. My replacement unit has always done ~3.5 hours on 2800mAh batteries.

This is on the same tasks, broadly speaking.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I thought this was only me. Battery life on my unit is very short these days. I would be interested to find out why my GP2X now uses up juice so quickly.

 

[Tobriand]

Yeah, I asked about it last summer - the most common cause is a resistor falling off. It doesn't stop the GP2x from working, but it does destroy it's battery life.

That said, mine was absolutely fine inside; I never did find out why it was eating batteries quite so fast.

 

[Megamixman]

But it's really the GPS feature and 10 hour battery life that sold me on it.

What GPS?


Btw, keep in mind that nothing in terms of software is guaranteed with the Pandora. The base system will likely be there, but anything of actual use is up to the community. This means it could take any unknown amount of time for feature X to appear.

 

[emil10001]

All right, with the announcement of bluetooth and the inevitable implementation of GPS. I will definitely buy Pandora. Retro games are nice, as is wifi, and possible Kaillera support for Metal Slug 3, and possible CPS 3 emulation (I value this more then N64 emulation to give you an idea). But it's really the GPS feature and 10 hour battery life that sold me on it.

Question for the developers: Does battery life vary during specific activities? Like say, listening to MP3's constantly will result in 9hour battery life, and etc.

GPS feature? Did I miss something?

AFAIK, GPS isn't to be included with the hardware. Although, it is likely that you'll be able to use a bluetooth gps unit tethered to this in conjunction with some software like maemo mapper.

 

[TaG]

Yeah, I asked about it last summer - the most common cause is a resistor falling off. It doesn't stop the GP2x from working, but it does destroy it's battery life.

That said, mine was absolutely fine inside; I never did find out why it was eating batteries quite so fast.

I didn't realise that could happen so dramatically. I wonder if the devs have been able to test Pandora components for likely drop off?

 

[Mark Watson]

Yeah, it was really battery life and lack of wifie that killed my interest in the GP2X.

It was having a wifie that killed it for me, as my wifie was very insistent that I wasn't to buy any more gadgets!

 

[Kyo]

I see what you did there