Touch Screen Reliability

[droneb]

and make em feel da pressure

 

[RotsiserMho]

The L button on my launch DS Lite sometimes doesn't work, even though you can hear it clicking fine. Never had problems with the touchscreen never had to recalibrate it, and I've played Elite Beat Agents to death as well as many other touchscreen heavy games since I've had it. I've seen the state the DS Phat touchscreens were in that were on display shortly after launch, and it wasn't pretty.

If you're going to stab at a screen over aggressively, that it's not the touchscreen to blame when it malfunctions or breaks

PS: Is it easy to fix the L button issue?

My L button gave out a few months ago on a DS I take great care of. Clicks just fine and everything. I too would be interested in hearing about a way to fix it!

 

[VRAndy]

I recalibrate my launch day DS whenever I haven't used it in awhile, but I've never been forced to do it by unresponsive games. I'm kinda curious as to how you guys treat your DSs that you've actually managed to damage them. I've always thought that they were very sturdy.

Yea, I don't treat mine with any sort of special care, and mine works fine and has done since day one. In fact, besides the Virtual Boy which will fall apart if you look at it too hard, I've always found Nintendo hardware to be very solidly built.

 

[Rathum]

I recalibrate my launch day DS whenever I haven't used it in awhile, but I've never been forced to do it by unresponsive games. I'm kinda curious as to how you guys treat your DSs that you've actually managed to damage them. I've always thought that they were very sturdy.

Yea, I don't treat mine with any sort of special care, and mine works fine and has done since day one. In fact, besides the Virtual Boy which will fall apart if you look at it too hard, I've always found Nintendo hardware to be very solidly built.

My GBA SP has taken probably 2 dozen 20 foot drops (stair case has a ledge that I put it on and it got knocked down) over the years and hasn't had any problems. That thing was solid.

I think the GCN was the best, though. It got kicked around like a soccer ball while it was in use (3 boys in various stages of puberty = clumsy, haphazard destruction) and it went down the stairs the hard way once or twice (can't remember the story behind that). I've always imagined that an airplane's black box is made the same way a GCN is :lol:

 

[b1llygo4t]

wow. the only systems i have EVER owned multiples of was the snes (everyone played it so much we got a second) and xbox (1001 uses for an xbox), tho i do own 3 ipods (non with touch screens) but only by chance

i used to work for a used game store as a repair tech. iv replaced about a dozen shoulder tact switches in DS Phats (SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR GAMING) and a hand full of screens (their the same part) and touch layers, but never from general wear and tear, only abuse. the hinge is the part that fails most often (where we got screens from). either way, nintendo was *genius* for placing such a fragile product in the hands of small children. arguably their far more likely to break before they wear out. those stupid fuses suck and nintendo sucks for using them (non user serviceable fuse???? FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!1!!)

personally, when i consider purchasing any electronics, i abuse the hell out of the demo product. if a knob sticks out i try to use it as a joy stick. if it has a screen i press on it. i twist the shell. try to put the media in backwards. etc. i still remember using my first ipod for the first time, and seeing all the scratches the inside of my pocket put on it after using it. (i fried it to return it for another one). i want to see a pandora go through a stress test till it broke. better yet id like to break one my self. they look sturdy as hell.

my GBASP has been through the washer, a 3 story fall onto a wooden deck, and me being drunk stepping on it while open, among other things. i still play some metroid or yoshis island with it while on the john. im gonna give it to my room mates 5 year old when i get my pando.

 

[iprice]

I always loved this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBHH-H837gg which showed reliability and build quality of the XBox, GameCube and PS2 when put to extremes!

 

[b1llygo4t]

i remember seeing something like that on a tv show. they did a bit more than that but not quite as big of a drop. by the end of the test all the systems where cracked and missing chunks. the xbox booted up to an error code and flashing red light, the ps2 rattled when you shook it and wouldnt turn on, and the gamecubes 3rd and 4th controller ports wouldnt work but it still played games.

when i was a repair tech we had so many busted ps2s they werent worth jack so we would pull pranks on each other. like we would hand a ps2 off to a sales employee in front of customers and "accidentally" drop it and blame them. much lulz to be had. on the 4th of july we blew a few up with firecrackers and another occasion we had a ps2 toss for a game of our choice as a kind of bonus. we had a "buy it no matter what policy" so we had ass loads of em. one time while cleaning out the back hall (messy storage) i found a ps1 wrapped in like 10 layers of duct tape with a piece of paper that said "WARNING!!!! ROACH SYSTEM!!!! NEVER OPEN!!!!)

lol i remember my friend Casey got dumped one day and threw his atari 2600 around his room, threw it out the second story window, THEN beat it with a hammer. we plugged it in and still worked

 

[God Ginrai]

I always loved this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBHH-H837gg which showed reliability and build quality of the XBox, GameCube and PS2 when put to extremes!

That video is bull. She could have put the front of the Xbox back on and pressed the button, and it would have turned on. (Trust me, I've seen it happen) The XBox is a beast that never dies. Although, it's interesting that the Gamecube can actually take a decent amount of punishment.

-God Ginrai

 

[chole]

As long as we're on the subject of touchscreen reliability:

My father bought me a SciPhone Dream G2 for my birthday. He thought it was an Android phone, but it's really a knockoff from a chinese company who modified their proprietary OS to look like android. The device itself seems analogous in technology to the Zaurus SL-5xxx series, albeit with more memory and storage, the addition of Wifi and Bluetooth and cellular connections, and the subtraction of a keyboard.

Anyway, after New Year's Eve, the touch screen was a bit off. It was mostly okay, but the keys on the OSK are *very* tiny, so every key was off, and several of the keys did not register at all! So I went into the pen calibration app. Unfortunately, the calibration seems broken -- it just goes back and forth between upper-left and lower-right click targets ad infinitum. I gave up after a couple hundred clicks. When I tried restoring to factory default conditions (not an easy task, as I had to rely on handwriting recognition to enter the password for this), the touch screen became vertically reversed, so that touching towards the top registers as clicks near the bottom of the screen, and vice-versa (I uploaded a video for it here).

So I think I'm starting to understand the frustrations that the Team may be having with getting the fabs to make things properly. I am wondering, though, how the screens can be tested for long term reliability. Has anybody taken the screens from half a year ago or more (before we got cases) and checked on them to see that they're not acting wonky after the passage of time?

 

[b1llygo4t]

I always loved this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBHH-H837gg which showed reliability and build quality of the XBox, GameCube and PS2 when put to extremes!

That video is bull. She could have put the front of the Xbox back on and pressed the button, and it would have turned on. (Trust me, I've seen it happen) The XBox is a beast that never dies. Although, it's interesting that the Gamecube can actually take a decent amount of punishment.

-God Ginrai

as far as the systems turning on after abuse testing, the video isnt bull. i doubt that the cast had the tools or know how available right then and there to fix it. not exactly user serviceable and repairing the unit would nullify the whole point of the video. on another note, the xbox is notorious for hdd and disc drive failure. unless its hard modded i wouldnt expect to much more life out of an xbox.

the only gamecube repairs i have ever done where shell and lid replacements that take about 5 minutes.

and yeah... ps2...

im interested in seeing how solid the pandora is, my hopes are its as much of a rock as the game boy titanic. they SHOULD destroy one, every product goes through some form of physical durability testing. we see everything else in the production, why not that?

 

[b1llygo4t]

sorry for the double post.

Has anybody taken the screens from half a year ago or more (before we got cases) and checked on them to see that they're not acting wonky after the passage of time?

isnt that screen in a netbook or tablet or something? we should go find a forum for people that use that device and do some lurking.

 

[deise]

Yeah the screen is in an Archos 605 but with a different ribbon cable, so anyone with one should be able to say how reliable the screen is

 

[fischju2000]

I've had an Archos 605 for a couple of years now, no problems with the touchscreen, though the OS is like Pmenu - large icons. When not zoomed, tiny tiny links like a specific thread page on a forum are hard to hit but I don't use a stylus for those either

 

[Wheels]

So I think I'm starting to understand the frustrations that the Team may be having with getting the fabs to make things properly. I am wondering, though, how the screens can be tested for long term reliability. Has anybody taken the screens from half a year ago or more (before we got cases) and checked on them to see that they're not acting wonky after the passage of time?

Some of the Pandora team have prototype hardware from a year to year and a half ago, there are videos from that period with the touchscreen being used.

 

[b1llygo4t]

@ wheels: i wonder how much use those got though. i doubt as much as a production unit

@ fischju2000: thats good to hear your is holding up. i just did a youtube search for web browsing on the Archos 605 it sounds like it runs a stripped down version of opera. these guys http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=14909&sid=a8524b5c517c4768766df2af1974f46a are getting fire fox to run on it, but you need a certain firmware or older. one of the things that really sold me on the pandora was that it runs full on firefox

@ thread: i spent about 10 minutes with google and all i found was a thread with a few people complaining about the screen not working right out of the box http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32874 but i couldnt find anything about them failing down the road. it couldnt hurt for a little more input if someone else wants to go looking around.

::edit:: are those analog nubs used on anything else?

 

[God Ginrai]

I always loved this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBHH-H837gg which showed reliability and build quality of the XBox, GameCube and PS2 when put to extremes!

That video is bull. She could have put the front of the Xbox back on and pressed the button, and it would have turned on. (Trust me, I've seen it happen) The XBox is a beast that never dies. Although, it's interesting that the Gamecube can actually take a decent amount of punishment.

-God Ginrai

as far as the systems turning on after abuse testing, the video isnt bull. i doubt that the cast had the tools or know how available right then and there to fix it.

My point is, they didn't need to fix it. They probably could have pushed the piece that fell off into place, then pushed the power button, and it still would have turned on. But they didn't.

-God Ginrai

 

[fischju2000]

The 605 runs Opera Mini with full flash support, it looks stripped down but I think FF on the Pandora should look the same. On the 605, the browser has a top line maybe 80px that shows just the tabs with favicons, wifi status, encryption status, time, battery, and an 'x' to close. A tiny button in the corner brought up by touching it or a button shows enter url, search, bookmarks, zoom options, ect. It's a very, very space efficient set-up. In the Pandora videos FF has been taking up maybe 1/3rd the space with toolbars. I know that can be configured, but a specially optimized Pandora theme or something should be made, especially for Firefox in Pmenu which has the typical PMP layout.

That hacking program has been pretty much dead for a while, Firefox shouldn't be mandatorily used just because it's Firefox. And the touchscreen isn't calibrated to start with, you have to navigate with the system menu (via the buttons) to get to the calibration screen. But overall, the 605 has had a lot of odd issues, both hardware and software, but the screen was never one of them. The shining point of the device.

 

[God Ginrai]

The 605 runs Opera Mini with full flash support, it looks stripped down but I think FF on the Pandora should look the same. On the 605, the browser has a top line maybe 80px that shows just the tabs with favicons, wifi status, encryption status, time, battery, and an 'x' to close. A tiny button in the corner brought up by touching it or a button shows enter url, search, bookmarks, zoom options, ect. It's a very, very space efficient set-up. In the Pandora videos FF has been taking up maybe 1/3rd the space with toolbars. I know that can be configured, but a specially optimized Pandora theme or something should be made, especially for Firefox in Pmenu which has the typical PMP layout.

That hacking program has been pretty much dead for a while, Firefox shouldn't be mandatorily used just because it's Firefox. And the touchscreen isn't calibrated to start with, you have to navigate with the system menu (via the buttons) to get to the calibration screen. But overall, the 605 has had a lot of odd issues, both hardware and software, but the screen was never one of them. The shining point of the device.

Simple Solution: Fullscreen Mode

I'm also hoping to figure out some nice Pandora-specific keybindings for Vimperator on the Pandora.

-God Ginrai

 

[Tensuke]

::edit:: are those analog nubs used on anything else?

No, they are custom made for OP.

 

[Pleng]

::edit:: are those analog nubs used on anything else?

iControl Pad