What Do We Actually Need A Pandora For?

[MaxSteiner]

Ok, sorry first off, this is little more than a rant at the latest Pandora news, but it is from a (newly converted) GP2X supporters point of view

Originally, I put my cash down for a wiz. I'd heard of the Pandora, but to be honest, size was more important to me than a ton of features I didn't need, and the possibility of emulating a bunch of playstation games which I couldn't be arsed to play the first time round.
... Then I found out about the lack of TV-out, and cancelled my order and stuck it on a Pandora.
Then all the cock ups with the preordering happened, and I was stuck in limbo, waiting to find out if my cash was on its way back to me or not.
Then the fanboi outbreak occured, and I discovered, that there were waiting in the darkness, fanatical zealots, every bit as rabid as I was in my support of the C64 against the ignorant barely evolved simians which owned Spectrums. ... Thats a bit odd I thought, surely people have moved on in the 20 odd years since then, afterall I was only about 7 when I was like that, these guys must be near they're 30's....
Turned out I was wrong.

Eventually I got my cash back and bought a GP2x with the craddle, and I am a happy motherfunker!
Which has got me thinking....
Sure the Pandora has the potential to do all of this stuff, but its a start up company without a product to show, which is demanding bank orders as the only payment... I'm not doubting the integrity of the Pandora team, I'm just saying, that is not the sign of a successful project.

Added to that, it doesn't actually exist yet (kinda like the Wiz I suppose), so abandoning all support for something as seriously sexy as the GP2x seems weird.
I know its alot more powerful, and hence theres probably alot more ports possible, and it should be able to run native linux software, and apprantly it'll do all the things my girlfriend wont even consider...
But from where I'm sitting all it seems to have done is fractured the comunity, and diverted alot of attention to stuff which doesn't actually exist...

Obviously as a non developing leacher with programing skills that end at coding mastermind, my opinion should count for zip, but Im interested in what more seasoned veterans of the scene think...

(should mention that I did really want a Pandora, a portable device withtv out and 4 usb sockets is gaming, heaven and I still consider £200 for that to be a bargain, but its increasingly becoming obvious that anyone who wants to pay for it with CC isn't getting one anytime soon, meaning another half a year of inactivity...
Whereas the GP2x does pretty much all I want the Pandora to do, exists now, and was about a quater of the price
And I could do pretty much anything it can't do with a netbook anyway.)

 

[peelie]

two words - 'battery life'

i don't think i have used the battery in my gp2X for over a year now; i always use the power adapter when i use the device in classes.

with the pandora that will mean one less set of wires to carry with me

 

[Tag5]

two words - 'battery life'
I totally agree...

 

[ledow]

Shouldn't think it will be long before the thread is closed, but... here's my personal take on the technical and practical issues of what has been promised to exist by both GPH and Pandora (I'm ignoring the whole politics thing behind the production of both):

I work as a network manager, so I have this suspicion of anything new and different until it's been tested extensively and even then, sticking with the tried and trusted rather than the new and faddy (my workplaces are all still on XP for quite obvious reasons... Vista tests lasted two hours before the IT team I was with collectively decided to ignore it until our list of about 50 problems were fixed).

Followed the GP2X for years but could never afford it (hadn't really heard of the GP32 or I would have had that too... I think I just assumed it wasn't available in the UK or was vastly less powerful than it is). Got an F-100 last Christmas (best Christmas present ever - congratulations to my wife for eBay sniping) and started coding for it. Platform was stable, firmwares galore, coding tools all in place, libraries all sorted out, most quirks known about, lots of nice code to pull in, plenty of people to offer help, everybody was focused on F-100 at the time.

Watched people buy the F-200: firmware trouble, backwards compatibility problems, touchscreen/LCD changes, removal of the stick-click, removal of USB host support, sound problems etc. The same sorts of things that happened in the F-100 and GP32 days but all over again from scratch. All things that were sorted out in the end (or can never be sorted out) but they would easily spoil my enjoyment if I owned one of them at the time. I'm waiting for the Pandora to come out so that people sell off their old GP2X stuff cheap so I can get a couple more and might have a F-200 as part of that. (Anyone with an F-100 they want to sell, preferably already with original firmware 3.0, give me a shout!)

Saw the Wiz announcements - as far as I can see, programmatically, it's just like the GP2X but it might have a lot of hardware problems. It'll need a recompile but it's much closer to the GP2X in terms of programming. Saw the Pandora - looked cool, exciting, state-of-the-art and I wasn't at all interested.

The GP2X was fun to program for, the Pandora it's just a recompile-and-tweak for the most part. The GP2X, you have to optimise, improvise and supervise everything you do. The Pandora... throw whatever is in the Debian repositories at it. The GP2X - each game self-contained, games don't interfere with anything, everything controlled from a simple menu. The Pandora - the selling points include the fact that you can just slap X onto it and run all the same programs. You are going to have path nightmares. The GP2X, the games focus on playability, and cramming whatever you can get out of the machine. The Pandora, just recompile some GPL code that uses the 3D card in brute force. The GP2X was quite cheap when I eventually bought it second-hand. The Pandora, it's several years away from being cheap. The GP2X is simple for the novice... slap games on card, plug card in, go to Games (even my wife can work out how to get into her favourite game on MAME). The Pandora is going to be a mini-PC, basically. The GP2X, runs SNES, Megadrive, etc. era games virtually flawlessly. That's all I want. I'm not that interested in N64 etc. because it wasn't really my era. The main advantage of the Pandora that I would personally enjoy on a non-coder level would be the keyboard, because I would love to sensibly be able to play ZX Spectrum games on it (the blasphemy concerning the ZX in the initial post shall be ignored :lol: ). You can't play Target:Renegade on a joystick, I'm sorry. But then, those tiny foldable keyboards for the PSP/PS3 are looking nicer and nicer each day...

If and when I do buy a successor to my GP2X, it will be another GP2X, or a F-200 or even (if I can get one really cheap) a GP32. Then it would be the Wiz (once released, in the market for a while, I can compare to other products, maybe even quiz someone who has one, I can get a toolchain that'll "just work", etc.). The Pandora is a mini-netbook. Interesting, sure. Innovative, yes. An extension of why I bought my GP2X? No. It'll be a couple of years yet before I get onto the Pandora and by then, there may well be several competitors.

I applaud the theory, but the practice is going to be too difficult for the next few years. A couple of non-political things put me off quite early on.

Closed-source 3D drivers really hurt me when I read that... that wasn't the point of the device that I'd originally read about. Maybe I imagined it, maybe not, but I have this idea in my head that the devices should be open-source down to the last nugget - I might never want to use the code but it's there and I have the capability to do so (as do others, hence the existence of the Open2X firmware!). The GP2X *wasn't* OS when I first got it (the app menu was closed-source, I believe) but it is now (as far as I know, it's GPL'd now) and it was in quite a minor place that the closed-source code existed. But binary blobs scare me. It's a tie back to the manufacturer that you can really do without. I believe that even as we speak, there are problems with tying the firmware for the 3D portion into more modern kernels - how does that fare for Open2x-like projects for the Pandora that want to upgrade the kernel?

The custom batteries - the standard 2 double-A's were a reason behind me purchasing the GP2X, believe it or not. I don't want to buy extra batteries from anywhere else - I have a ton of high-power AA's that fit a myriad of devices. If I could run my Nokia off double-A's, I would.

Feature creep - Bluetooth was one example. I don't want it. I have about five devices that use Bluetooth and it's turned off on all of them. I only use them in specific situations (e.g. bluetooth from the GPS module to the SatNav that has to use it). It's sapping "my" battery life, adding to "my" cost and all it does is introduce problems (i.e. now I have to make sure the radio is always turned off because I'm concerned about Bluejacking). Wifi just seemed complete overkill and is in there for the sake of it. More security issues. Now people can "hack" my Pandora if I don't configure it properly,. Dual card slots (I would never use the second one, personally), internal microphone, it's all extras that I won't use. They may only add pennies to the price but they add to the complexity, the problems, the battery power sapped etc. and don't help perform the one function I look for in a GP2X replacement - to play some homebrew and some emulators. I understand the commercial arguments (integrated chips which bring the functionality for free, etc.) but that's not what I want.

I just get this nagging feeling that if sights had been started lower, on a GP2X replacment first which allowed small incremental, modular upgrades, then everything would be so much different now. The Wiz seems so much closer to that ideal for me. Take a GP2X, change it a tiny bit, improve the speed, done. But to me, even the F-100 to F-200 was FAR too great a leap and I steered clear.

 

[maciek_urbanski]

Sure the Pandora has the potential to do all of this stuff, but its a start up company without a product to show, which is demanding bank orders as the only payment... I'm not doubting the integrity of the Pandora team, I'm just saying, that is not the sign of a successful project.

Stories like those are rather common in IT industry. Some of most successful companies (Apple, HP, Intel) had even shakier beginnings... So it's not really a sign of anything.

Added to that, it doesn't actually exist yet (kinda like the Wiz I suppose), so abandoning all support for something as seriously sexy as the GP2x seems weird.

Sexy is very relative. B) I can be sexy to my wife, but most probably will not be sexy to most of you... B)
The same with GP2x - for me it's a yesterday's technology with weak user interface, low quality graphics and unacceptable battery life. But hey - opinions differ.

I know its alot more powerful, and hence theres probably alot more ports possible, and it should be able to run native linux software, and apprantly it'll do all the things my girlfriend wont even consider...

Let's not forget - first and foremost it's a game console. Damn, it's a Doom-3 capable game console. In your hand. Playing for couple of hours. More revolution than evolution.

But from where I'm sitting all it seems to have done is fractured the comunity, and diverted alot of attention to stuff which doesn't actually exist...

Yup, you're right. But fracture is such a negative word. If somebody sees Pandora as "better" or "more interesting" than GP2x - let him be. We can coexist in peace. Different, but not "fractured". B)

Obviously as a non developing leacher with programing skills that end at coding mastermind, my opinion should count for zip, but Im interested in what more seasoned veterans of the scene think...

I disagree - you stated your opinion without stepping on any toes. Nowadays - that's a feat. Give us more.

(should mention that I did really want a Pandora, a portable device withtv out and 4 usb sockets is gaming, heaven and I still consider £200 for that to be a bargain, but its increasingly becoming obvious that anyone who wants to pay for it with CC isn't getting one anytime soon, meaning another half a year of inactivity...

Personal choices. Doing bank transfer is not so hard. If you feel that it's too risky - well - it's a personal choice.

Whereas the GP2x does pretty much all I want the Pandora to do, exists now, and was about a quater of the price
And I could do pretty much anything it can't do with a netbook anyway.)

Beautiful games. Not just nice to play, but eye-candy-gorgeous. With great analog input. For long hours. This is Pandora for me. B)

 

[RajTakhar]

Despite having a GP32 and GP2X, I went for the Pandora for its sheer completness, I really liked the CPU/GPU, RAM, Twin SDHC, not to mention battey life and keyboard which would make using atari/amiga emulators a complete please instead of all the twiddling around you have to do on the GP2X

I'll still keep the GP32 and GP2X as I love em, but will use the Pandora when I eventually get on a more daily basis for other things such as web browsing and viewing videos (i know GP2X can do this - but on a train when battery runs pretty flat, quickly its a real pain)

 

[PokeParadox]

Battery life... that's exactly why my GP2X doesn't get as much use as it should.
I have high capacity rechargeables and battery life is still not so hot.

Don't get me wrong, I love my GP2X... especially since mine was Dpad modded by ED! But Pandora will be a nice step up and I'll actually start using my portable homebrew device again.

 

[azmodean]

Another vote for battery life being a huge issue, just this past weekend I had a whole batch of new games to try out on my gp2x, got them on the SD card, played through a few, then my batteries cut out. "No problem", I thought, "this is why I keep another pair in the charger". So I swapped them out and booted the GP2x back up and only was able to play for about an hour before THAT set gave out on me. It seems this set (my second) is starting to give out. Now I need to buy another set of batteries so I can go back to playing for more than an hour of a time.

Also there is the whole single app issue, so often if anything goes wrong with an app it requires a power cycle to recover the system, which would be not too bad except the boot time is a bit long.

I love my gp2x, I released my first ever GPL app targeting it, which I use the heck out of on long trips (book reader software), but for anything more demanding (my app runs with the CPU at 100MHz) the battery life is crippling, and the inability to recover from application errors is a frequent annoyance. And then there's the feature set of the Pandora, which I just won't go into here as it has been covered in some great detail and breadth elsewhere

 

[Kayday]

3 words = control control control.

I would've kept all models of the GP2X if it were not for the dpad. And I expect the Pandora to have excellent controls because DaveC is behind it.

 

[Wolfsclaw]

1. Dpad, because the one for my GP2x F100 sucks
2. Battery Life
3. You just got to love the Community spirit (well, when everyone has received their pandas that is... i know that right now the community is kind of raging)
4. Surfing the web, downloading things, playing online! All the good homebrew stuff that will evolve from this, esp. with the possibility of homebrew games / ports using the WLAN feature! Imagine... playing Quake 3 online with fellow Pandoras

etc. etc.

 

[jbrodack]

when i saw the thread title I expected a bunch of flames but was surprised with a fairly well thought out original post and replies. I've still been enjoying my gp2x and haven't felt the immediate need for a wiz or pandora. then again I still enjoy my ps2 and haven't felt the need for any current generation consoles either. gp2x has lots of cool games natively for it and tons more that can be played with great emulators. the f200 has touchscreen which psp doesn't even have. it does most of what I want with a few snes games running playable being one of the few things I'd really want out of it.

is tv out confirmed not to be in the wiz? i know they were having troubles with it but didn't know if it was definitely not gonna be in it.

i could see why people pandora community would be upset right now. though being a "devoted" early adopter before a product is out usually leads to problems.

anyway I've actually been somewhat pleased with the delays of wiz and pandora as I thought they were initially coming out a little soon. when they come out now I think it'll be the right time. they both will have a lot to offer though the gp2x still has a lot to offer and would like to see support for it continue. wiz and pandora should hopefully please most of the community when they do come out. wiz is more my thing cause of price and me not needing keyboard and other features of pandora though i do see the appeal of pandora as well.

 

[MaxSteiner]

Well, thanks for the lack of flaming going on here, I've been labled a troll on the Pandora forum now I think

@ Jbrodack: TV out was taken off the list of working features apparantly. A TV out cable is on the horizon, but not yet (added to that I kinda got the impression that you couldn't use any USB controlers on it either at the momment

To everyone else:
A decent controller is something the Pandora offers hopefully.
I'm used to doing fireballs and dragon punches 100% normally, can't even do them on my F100 but then, playing 2D beat em ups in 1 player is pretty sad Works fine on shoot'emups though!
I'm just not convinced about the layout or the inclusion of non clicking analogue sticks. I'm sure the D-Pad is a dream (Although personally I've always prefered thumb sticks ala Neo Geo pocket to D pads) though, and honestly, the analogue nubs are prerty out of the way so they can gather dust without annoying

The Battery is the major selling point of course.... I just don't believe the times they're giving (But then again I've never come across a device with realistic battery life listed), but I'm sure it'll be a hellava lot more usable than the GP2X
That said though, if we don't see a Pandora till 6-7 months down the line, 3000 MaH batteries will be pretty cheap, I've got a three battery mod, so I might even get 4.5 hours out of it then I know its about half the lifespan of a Panda, but my point is, every month its delayed is a month that rechargeable AA's advance

I still kinda want a Pandora though...

 

[craigix]

I promise the battery stats are real. I expect people to easily get over 10 hours on non intense apps (ie old gp2x apps) but it will be less with wifi enabled, that said the wifi set up is as low power as it can realistically be.

10 hours should not be too surprising - maybe 6/7 with wifi, after all it's a 4000mah battery!

With everything maxed but without wifi enabled it ran for 8.5 hours.

Dare I say in the future once things are much more optimised we could be looking at 15+ hours?

 

[Orange Pumpkin]

In my opinion Pandora has many advantage but I guess it won't make me buy it becous the only laptop-like devis I like is DSi/DS lite And the control DESIGN is awful for me ,, I think it might be usable but it doesn't look too good

Conserning to battery both GP2X and Pandora have really good battery systems and the Wiz can hide but the Wiz has much better screen I think it might be the reason too ,, back to Pandora and GP2X :

-Pandora - really long time but after it You can do what You want any way it won't work without recharging

-GP2X - shorter time but after it You go to the closest shop and buy the cheapes batteries ( really useful on long trips ( 10 - 48 h ) )

 

[Chip]

Well, thanks for the lack of flaming going on here, I've been labled a troll on the Pandora forum now I think
A label you have attained through deliberate effort on your part.

well part of my intent is to cause trouble, since the best way to combat the most rabid of fanboys is to mock them mercilessly

I'm not sure why a thread like this even needs to exist. Surely we're all well aware of the features and specifications of both devices. What you want out of a handheld is going to determine which device you choose. There are several thousand people chomping at the bit to get a Pandora, and when you consider the feature set and form factor, it's pretty obvious why. There are people eagerly awaiting the Wiz too, because it has all the features they're looking for.

So if the answer to your question is so plainly obvious, why start such a potentially inflammatory thread at all?

 

[Orkie]

So if the answer to your question is so plainly obvious, why start such a potentially inflammatory thread at all?

To upset you of course! You are after all the first person to introduce even a hint of aggressiveness into this thread .

 

[pubzombie]

I dont code and i rarely watch avi's or play music. I just play games and run emulators. I have a GP2X with cradle etc. I want a Pandora for the keyboard and control sticks and battery power -simple really. Cant wait

 

[MaxSteiner]

I promise the battery stats are real. I expect people to easily get over 10 hours on non intense apps (ie old gp2x apps) but it will be less with wifi enabled, that said the wifi set up is as low power as it can realistically be.

10 hours should not be too surprising - maybe 6/7 with wifi, after all it's a 4000mah battery!

With everything maxed but without wifi enabled it ran for 8.5 hours.

Dare I say in the future once things are much more optimised we could be looking at 15+ hours?

15 hours would be very impressive! When I placed my preorder I really toyed with the idea of getting a few spare batteries as well, with visions of me and my pandora in a post-apocalyptic world... might actually learn to code properly without any distractions lol.
That really put's into perspective how much more efficent it is than a GP2X, I don't think you'd get more than 4 hours out it with 4000mah AA's when they eventually exist

Edit===> As to why start this thread, I was honestly interested in whether the more established members of the GP2X scene favoured the Pandora, or the Wiz as the eventual successor format (After all some of the best C64 games were made after the Atari ST and Amiga were out), or indeed if there were a hard core who think theres still some life in the old dog yet

 

[Consequence_9]

for me one of the greatest advantages of the pandora is that it completely eliminates the need for a seperate device in order for it to function. one will no longer need to do all that transferring back and forth from a computer. on that note, having a fully functional web browser in my pocket with a screen big enough to enjoy it is a huge deal (im typing this on the horrible neutered psp browser, laptop cord broke). plus hastle free streaming music/media. oh, and im a huge linux dork, lol

 

[coldfish]

Nice couple of posts; maxSteiner & ledow.

I agree with the sentiments of this thread.

Before I bought my f100 two or three years ago, I really wanted an portable emulation machine in a handheld form factor. I mainly wanted to emulate classic 8-16bit stuff and maybe some low-end 32bit machines like the GBA.
The GP2X does everything I want, plus. Having begun my handheld fixation with an Atari Lynx early on, I'm not afraid of lousy battery life, AA capacity will only improve as time goes on and good NiMH are dirt cheap. Ive never had issue with the GP2X's controls, if it breaks I get to mod it.

I dont need Pandora or Wiz because the 2X still does everything I want, if the scene closed shop tomorrow, the quantity and quality of emulators would keep the 2X useful to me for some time to come.

Having said that, I can see that a lot of people want something new, bigger and better, so they will move on, so be it. I'll probably get a Wiz at some point, the Pandora is way out of my budget for a hobby handheld especially with the lousy dollar and I have an eeePC as a portable computer, which is already my minimum usable physical size limit for prolonged general computing tasks, (it's awful for more than short stints).

I've come to believe that "the more, the better"; more open source handheld machines = more options and choices for the open source handheld community, which is a -good- thing.

People get so defensive/offensive about these things, I think it's mostly insecurity speaking which is their problem, it wont be solved arguing on an internet forum.