The Bad About The Gp2x... Every Owner Chime In

[Oscaruzzo]

Unscrewing joystick is not a solution for all the problems, but it did loosen up my joystick when I tried it on my unit. I think, it's worth the try if you think it's too stiff.

Nope, i tried but nothing changed (ehrr, actually the knob came away )

Being slippery is the design issue, GPH should've used less slippery material and shape.

Too bad. I'm trying to find that "liquid rubber" someone suggested, but no store seems to have it...
Maybe in the end i'll make the knob "concave" (probably using a hot steel ball...)

Speaking of memory, are you talking about NAND? 64MB is more than plenty for mainRAM in a handheld, IMO. Is there other handheld giving more than 64MB out there?

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Well, the more, the better

 

[BlackDayz]

Myself, I can't see the RAM as an issue, as the Xbox has the same amount of RAM. As for the joystick, I'm going to see about making one for myself. I found out about liquid plastic casting and was pointed to the website http://www.smooth-on.com/proto.htm. But, I haven't gotten it yet, so I don't know if another joystick is for me.

 

[DaveC]

Myself, I can't see the RAM as an issue, as the Xbox has the same amount of RAM. As for the joystick, I'm going to see about making one for myself. I found out about liquid plastic casting and was pointed to the website http://www.smooth-on.com/proto.htm. But, I haven't gotten it yet, so I don't know if another joystick is for me.

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The problem is more than the slipperyness of the cap though. It is mechanically flawed with the large dead zone. This is due to the way the switches in the stick assembly are made. That will require some hardware hacking to fix. Making the stick longer will make it less stiff but will increase the throw distance even more making the dead zone even bigger. Making shorter will help dead zone but make it even stiffer.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

I dont own one yet, but ive heard a few things, such as...

-28 seconds to boot up? Thats new to me

A dirty lie! It's 23 secs, I stopped it three times. - however I am not sure if it takes longer when you have an SD card inserted, since mine isn't working.

-EASY to crash/brick, (can this be accomplised simply through playing around in the explorer?

wrong, you crash it by flashing your firmware, just DON'T update the damn bootloader, damn you bootloader!

-MP3 player very basic, any homebrew out yet?

it plays music, what did you expect? 3D Graphics?

 

[Ravnos]

I just got mine, so I may as well throw my 2 cents in.

Bad:

• Joystick: Like everyone else said, it's not so great. The dead zones are a bit irritating, but craigix posted how he modded his to make it more responsive. I might do that myself. I don't know about this "slippery" shit, though. I haven't slipped off it at all yet, so I can only assume you guys are a bunch of sweaty bastards.
• Headphone Jack: Mine hasn't fallen out, but one look in the jack and you'll know that shit is fragile. I tested it out gently and I was terrified of wrecking it the whole time. If someone comes up with a preventative fix for it, I want to be the first to know. Seriously.

So-so:

• Buttons: They're a little squishy feeling. Not as firm as I'm used to. Not a big deal, though. I've already adjusted.
• Boot time: Takes a little longer than I'm used to, but it's not so bad. If it gets shorter, though, I won't complain.
• Videos: I have to re-encode my videos so that the sound and video stays in sync? WTF? Not a deal breaker, though, and admittedly I haven't done the firmware upgrade yet.

Good:

• Screen: It's beautiful. I guess some people have been having problems with theirs, but mine is gorgeous. Much nicer than I expected.
• Batteries: With 2500mAh rechargeables, it's lasted a while so far. It's not the 6+ hours that GPH promised, but it's a far cry from the 30 minutes some people were whining about.
• Programming: SDL means I can jump in without too much pain. It's well documented and widely available, much more so than the open SDKs for other handhelds. I'm looking forward to jumping into the homebrew thing head first with it.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with it so far, and things can only get better from here.

 

[Huxley]

Ooh look! A thread for whiners. Just what we needed.



The bad: it takes too long to boot, the firmware is very buggy, the screen will scratch easily, not all the features are working

But most of my (and everyone else's) complaints should be solved in time. Not a big deal.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

The Stick has a great up/down, left/right axis. only the microswitches between are a bit of a problem, but I guess it will work out nice for 3D games and will be well with 2D ones(if the emulator/game/GPH Linus get's optimized a bit, that is...)

 

[nubie]

The joystick has to be the biggest problem as it can't be fixed by the magic firmware that we are supposed to get someday.

Mine has to be coaxed to go in the "down" position. Huge dead zone. I have to press hard, real hard for it to wake up. It makes playing shooters nearly impossible. It is too bad because the screen has better contrast and deeper colors than the GP32 BLU

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I just would like to point out that the "press real hard" is not what is "waking up" the stick.

The fact is that you pressed it longer and the program finally picked up the keypress. I have had the problem where I needed to loosen the screws and then tighten them carefully in a different sequence because I got the circuit board too far left, thus interfering with joystick operations, that is a different problem.

This can be fixed in firmware, if you were to look at what the stick is reading you would find that the physical switches are actually doing their job admirably, but peoples crappy polling routines are masking that fact.

I thoroughly agree that the cap is completely without grip (and perhaps a tad too high), this makes it *seem* as though the deadzone is too big, in actuality it is only 24 degrees or something, you can read the datasheet on it, there is a link to a source for the actual joysticks in a thread somewhere and the place selling them has a *.pdf of specs for the whole switch unit.

I think just grinding a concave into the top of the current stick with nice corners and then removing the outside sharp edge of the cap, then rubbercoating it would completely solve anyone's problems with the stick.

 

[DaveC]

The joystick has to be the biggest problem as it can't be fixed by the magic firmware that we are supposed to get someday.

Mine has to be coaxed to go in the "down" position.  Huge dead zone. I have to press hard, real hard for it to wake up.  It makes playing shooters nearly impossible.  It is too bad because the screen has better contrast and deeper colors than the GP32 BLU 

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I just would like to point out that the "press real hard" is not what is "waking up" the stick.

The fact is that you pressed it longer and the program finally picked up the keypress. I have had the problem where I needed to loosen the screws and then tighten them carefully in a different sequence because I got the circuit board too far left, thus interfering with joystick operations, that is a different problem.

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Well no because it works better (still not great because of the dead zone) in all other directions. So you are telling me that all programs have bad polling in just the "down" direction? I don't buy that, sorry. The stick is just a bit dodgy.