Things I do not want to see again in a P2

[FaeMinx]

Ok, very poor choice of words.

 

[slaeshjag]

+1 on battery holding, I still haven't figured out how to do it properly. Best solution so far has been a few layer of electrical tape in the bezel, and a length of heat shrink tube along the short edge of the battery.

WiFi needs to be looked over, as it just doesn't work at all with some AP's. I will soon switch over to a USB stick based AP, so if OPT wants an AP that went from awesome to garbage over one pandora OS upgrade, that can be arranged

I wish for the PMIC to be glued down with industrial strength epoxi. I have had two pandoras with the PMIC dysfunctional due to mechanical failure. We'll see if the third pandora that I (hopefully?) get will fail the same way

Case that doesn't fall apart.

And most importantly: No Craig.

 

[b_o_b]

Apparently Pandora is already pretty much what the community wants. Everybody has his/her own minor or major wishes, but at the end of the day the Pandora is the best compromise of all those ideas and wishes. 

Especially in the beginning of P1 production the quality control was not very good, so I don't want to see that again. The rest is just optimizing the already good concept and improve upon it.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Agree with you there.  But don't forget to make the screen rotateable vertically though 

 

[matzesu]

At the days, i preordered my Pandora, there where the "shipped in two months " thing..

So, whit this in minde, i didtnt ordered one of the Gamepark Handhelds , as i tougt, i only would have its twoo months to shorten the waitingtime for the Pandora. .

The 2 Month dos feel like 3 Yeahrs.. but i expextet the Pandora to come soon..

So i ditnt had a Homebrewhandheld to shorten the waitingtime..

When i did know at this day, more than 3 Yeahrs ago, i will get my Pandora at march 2011 via premium upgrade

I think i would by a gp2x wiz to shorten the waitingtime. .

Now, i have a Pandora 1 which is thangs to ginge.pnd a great gp2x and also a DS, and Playstation and Gameboy. .

So i think i ditnt need to see on a Pandora 2 that i ditnt have a Homebrewhandheld to shorten the waitingtime. .

 

[texture]

For most people the actual keymat is good enough. But if you really want to write I never had a better keypad than the one Psion used for their Revo. It was just perfect compared to the size. I wonder if something like this would be possible for the P2. I mean, not the positioning but the keys theirselves.

Do you remember?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Revo

 

[thatgui]

Isn't that what the "lock" position of the power-switch is for?

It is, but while I often used it in the beginning, it "wore of" pretty quickly, so I avoided to use it.

Actually it isn't rare. The Windows start up sound plays before software controls become available: every time you boot your laptop it will start playing audio that you cannot mute for at least several seconds.

I know I is just a bad example, but why the heck not disable the startup sound if it is so annoying (and useless)? But this gets me to the question, how early/late the volume control mechanism would work in the boot process of the P2.

It's also not the only benefit: add as many steps as you want, the scale is still digital, and there's something very jarring about audio that changes in steps instead of continuous. It's also impossible to fine tune, as was mentioned. When wearing my headphones, my Pandora's volume wheel is almost muted; on my laptop I only need the audio at 4%. Digital volume means the step from 4% to 5% is huge, even on a logarithmic scale. It's less of a problem on something open source like the Pandora where I could change the code so it implements fractional steps when that low, but why? What benefit does digital add that analog can't? You provided your one case where you mute the sound and then don't get woken up by an alarm, but I absolutely do not want software changing my volume without my intervention and would prefer it to not even be able to. If I want the audio muted, it should stay mute. If I want it blasting it should blast until I tell it otherwise.

Is it really such a chore to give the wheel a little flick before going to bed?

Sure it is still digital, but as said before, the height of the "resolution" you can get/want out of a wheel is capped by your fine motor skills, and your actual hearing needs.The advantage is that you are a lot more free on how the volume control should work. And why should any software ignore the adjustment you already made ?

Spam threads like "Things I do not want to see again in a P3"

But complaining is the only thing I'm really good at

Sure, you can implement 100 steps. But then going from near-silent to full loudness is going to take a lot of button presses. Even with a very cleverly designed mechanism, it's always going to be easier to rapidly find the right volume setting with some kind of continuous control (wheel, slider, whatever) than with discrete controls (on/off buttons).

Thats the beauty of having the behaviour defined in software: you can completely ajdust it to your needs, no one needs 100 steps. You may be faster with a volume wheel, but I doubt that this is more than 10 min summed up over the complete product lifecycle

If the volume wheel would be like I described it (with an option of software override and with the software able to see the current position of the wheel), you don't get the disadvantages of not being able to know the current volume and having an alarm going off without making any sound.

That would be at least a step forward, but I doubt that these are available for a cheap price (if they are at all)

You can always just not use the wheel (put some tape over it even) and set it at a fixed position. Nothing is stopping you from using software volume control. A dedicated hardware volume control is an extra feature - you don't lose anything by having it.

as said before: convenience

I already hate it on my phone when it sometimes doesn't react at all for 5 - 6 seconds and then suddenly moves more than I wanted, simply because the CPU is stressed...

What phones are you guys using ? I probably use the most preloaded with bloatware phone lineup there is: Samsung Galaxy Note 2/3 and never experienced something like that.

 

[ekianjo]

Thats the beauty of having the behaviour defined in software: you can completely ajdust it to your needs, no one needs 100 steps. You may be faster with a volume wheel, but I doubt that this is more than 10 min summed up over the complete product lifecycle

Seriously you seem to be the only one around asking for digital volume adjustment. I don't understand any of your convenience points either. Sure you can define 50 points instead of 10 points for volume via software, but it will take an awful long time to go through the scale the more precise you want to be. While a volume wheel is precise AND fast AND flexible: you can go either fast/slow when fine-tuning the volume, it's the ultimate freedom. 

ANd you are talking about convenience, so why do you bring the "amount of minutes summed up over the complete product lifecycle" into that debate?  It's more convenient to be fast AND precise, it's not about how much time you save. The experience is just plain better.

With the volume wheel you have direct control over the volume out, while software has to go through the whole OS and drivers before acting on the volume - it's obviously bullshit and in case something goes wrong (i.e. your system crashes while playing a sound) you end up with a sound you cannot fix and turn down unless you reboot your machine. It's just a pain in the ass, I can't believe you are seriously making an argument for that.  

What phones are you guys using ? I probably use the most preloaded with bloatware phone lineup there is: Samsung Galaxy Note 2/3 and never experienced something like that.

I have a Galaxy S3 and there are certainly several times where it lags while doing something, and completely stops reacting. Its a clear "no-no" for me to have only digital controls. 

as said before: convenience

The solution proposed by _wb_ is already convenient. You already have the choice not to use the volume wheel. Not sure what else you want.  Oh I got one more advice for you: just glue the wheel to the case so that it never moves anymore, then you get your perfect digital only system on the cheap. 

 

[slaeshjag]

^ Not to mention. Nobody will stop you from cranking up the volume to max and setting the actual volume in software. You have have it your way, just don't take our wheel

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

That wheel is a rare commodity in today's mobile devices. Keep it and P2 will make your friends envy just like P1 now  . Yeah so keep it.

 

[matzesu]

Jepp, i wants to have a vollumewheel in Pandora 2, because its a cool statement to the digital world this days..

( i can remember, i had a creative zen xfi2 mp3 Player , it was cool, but to change the vollume, you had to open the lockscreen, and then change it via touchscreen..)

for sport, this isnt a good solution..

So let the Vollume Key on the Pandora 2 be physikal..

And i can remember: At the early Days of the pandora, there was a idea, to use the vollume Wheel for Games like Pong ..

 

[thatgui]

Seriously you seem to be the only one around asking for digital volume adjustment.

This implicates what exactly ?

I don't understand any of your convenience points either. Sure you can define 50 points instead of 10 points for volume via software, but it will take an awful long time to go through the scale the more precise you want to be. While a volume wheel is precise AND fast AND flexible: you can go either fast/slow when fine-tuning the volume, it's the ultimate freedom.

As already said before, there are a lot of ways to increment/decrement to the next or previous "step". A volume wheel isn't the ultimate freedom (at least not more than a digital volume control), its quite limited.

ANd you are talking about convenience, so why do you bring the "amount of minutes summed up over the complete product lifecycle" into that debate?  It's more convenient to be fast AND precise, it's not about how much time you save. The experience is just plain better.

beeing fast was one of his arguments, I countered that-whats wrong with it ?

With the volume wheel you have direct control over the volume out, while software has to go through the whole OS and drivers before acting on the volume - it's obviously bullshit and in case something goes wrong (i.e. your system crashes while playing a sound) you end up with a sound you cannot fix and turn down unless you reboot your machine. It's just a pain in the ass, I can't believe you are seriously making an argument for that.

Why is this "bullshit" exactly? I doubt that your case happens very often - or am I (again) the only one that does not suffer immensly from a case that happens how often again ?

I have a Galaxy S3 and there are certainly several times where it lags while doing something, and completely stops reacting. Its a clear "no-no" for me to have only digital controls.

Under what conditions do such cases occur ? Maybe I'm just too slow to notice

The solution proposed by _wb_ is already convenient. You already have the choice not to use the volume wheel. Not sure what else you want.  Oh I got one more advice for you: just glue the wheel to the case so that it never moves anymore, then you get your perfect digital only system on the cheap.

Would you mind reading posts before answering ? Or do you really want to tell me that pressing a button / turning a wheel is exactly as convenient as opening a closed device, use a finger/pen/the nubs to open the dialog and fine tune the settings in a dialog that was never ment for such a usecase ? With the Pandoras keyboard keys usually already having a second/third functions its quite hard to find a key combo not in use.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

OK now that we've beaten the volume wheel to death, I have a wish on another thing.  I'd like to the audio jack of P2 to be placed in the rear, not in the front like P1 now.  As it is now, it's kind of in the way and cannot be rested comfortably against my belly while lying in bed when using headphones.

 

[pmprog]

Something I would like to see go: The nubs, to be replaced with little analogue sticks... I can't stand them, but that's probably just me

That said, if my "issues" are caused by the auto-calibration, I'd be okay with them if that was removed.

A better battery compartment would be nice too. Maybe if you load the battery from the side of the Pandora, rather than the bottom.

 

[matzesu]

Im also for Audio Jack on the Rear, because this makes the device more "komforttabel"..

And the Touchscreen Pen should bee a lot bigger and less screchy for the screen, maybe whit a softer tipp

EDIT: ät EvilDragon have a lot X-Stylie at his Shop to sell, maybe whe can build the Stylus Slot on the Pandora2 for the X-Stylus, and include a X-Stylus whit the Pandora 2

 

[WizardStan]

That said, if my "issues" are caused by the auto-calibration, I'd be okay with them if that was removed.

Depends on the issues, but one of the issues is definitely the auto-calibration. I've actually found the physical nubs themselves to be awesome, they're actually really simple, and have asked to buy some for personal projects but never got a response. That being said, if thumbsticks can be found with the same travel and same height as the nubs so as not to change the thickness of the case any that may be ideal, but that is the issue: how do you get a stick to be no longer than the nub and still able to move the same distance?

 

[pmprog]

Well, my example is controlling the mouse, I can push up and the cursor moves to the top of the screen, but as I pull it to the "down" position, the cursor doesn't move for a good 10 seconds and then starts really slowly until it "gets going"...

The other thing I don't like is that you can spin the nub without moving it. I understand why this is the case, but I have a bluetooth keyboard (I think this one), which also has a nub but IIRC feels more sturdy.

Haven't used the keyboard for a while (I don't know where I put it when I was packing for the house move), so I could be mistaken, but I'm 90% certain it felt better.

Again, that could be personal preference though

Edit: Interesting little fact, if you search Google Images for "bluetooth keyboard mouse nub", you get keyboards, mice, iControlPad 2, Pandora, and bras! Not quite sure why the last appears, and as I'm at work, I'm not going to investigate

 

[ekianjo]

This implicates what exactly ?

That implies we are not making a successor just for you.

A volume wheel isn't the ultimate freedom (at least not more than a digital volume control), its quite limited.

Again, maybe you think so, but I don't find any of your arguments convincing. What's really better about the digital volume control ?

beeing fast was one of his arguments, I countered that-whats wrong with it ?

Because convenience is not just limited to one factor. It's the whole experience that counts.

Why is this "bullshit" exactly? I doubt that your case happens very often - or am I (again) the only one that does not suffer immensly from a case that happens how often again ?

It happens often enough for me not to want this to be the only option to turn volume down.

Under what conditions do such cases occur ? Maybe I'm just too slow to notice

Example, alarm goes off in the morning, and because I left several applications on, the phone is way less reactive and it takes me at least 10 seconds before I can turn the volume down. Extremely annoying.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

With volume wheel, I can listen to my music and adjust the volume while the Pandora is closed and is in my pocket without looking at the device.  How can you do that with digital volume control without open the screen, and maybe log in if it's logged out, and then you have to search for the digital volume control and hope it still works after the lid has been closed for a long time.  Physical volume wheel still rules

 

[ekianjo]

Or do you really want to tell me that pressing a button / turning a wheel is exactly as convenient as opening a closed device, use a finger/pen/the nubs to open the dialog and fine tune the settings in a dialog that was never ment for such a usecase ? With the Pandoras keyboard keys usually already having a second/third functions its quite hard to find a key combo not in use.

Then what you want is dedicated buttons on the side of the Pandora? I'm afraid it will be either a wheel or your buttons, and it looks like most people want a wheel. So I'm not really sure what you expect for the P2, because all people I know who have a Pandora love it BECAUSE of the wheel control. It's going to be tough to remove it and pretend buttons are better for everyone.