Wow, Over A Year Late?

[MiniSinisterMinister]

This post is not supposed to bash the Pandora or the efforts of OP. I just want to explain why my view on the Pandora has changed. In 2008 I wanted the Pandora for everything, now I just want it as an advanced emulation handheld and I use my smartphone for the rest.

it sounds like your expectations of a smartphone has gone up due to your enjoyment of using one whereas your requirements for a gaming device has gone down, which is fair enough and i can kinda understand. still, i dont think the price of the pandora would have changed considerably if they decided to go for a model without a keyboard. maybe i am wrong there... but something would have had to give to make it non clamshell be it nub position, screen size, etc. overall i dont think it cheapens or lessens the appeal of the pandora being able to do those things

Yes, your are right. It takes nothing away from me. I just wanted to show that, for me, the delay actually has had a great effect on my view of the handheld. If the Pandora had come out early 2009, I might have never bought an iPhone and kept my old cell phone for a couple of more years. Because of the delays it is becoming less and less impressive.

Primary things I will do on my Pandora is emulation, design work and surfing the Internet. No other portable device even compares when it comes to these three areas combined. In the pocketable market it might even be the best in each individual category right now. I can bring the Pandora with me wherever I go, without having to pack a bunch of stuff with me, and I can just pick it up and use wherever I might be (maybe not on the beach).

How do you know that? The Pandora is not out yet, the OS is still in the beta phase. On the other hand, the iPhone is out and it has a mature OS and superb user interface. Just a fingertip and every text on a web page is perfectly scaled to match the screen. The iPhone has access to the internet from nearly anywhere (I even get reception when on the underground train). The Pandora has a higher resolution screen, but will it surpass the user experience of other decives? I think ED wrote on the German forum that Apple must have a whole army of developers to make their iPhone software that good. He wrote that they are still struggling to clean the Pandora OS from easily noticeable bugs.

 

[aesir911]

i'm a first day preorderer and i swore i'm in it for real no matter how long it takes. also, the 128->256MB RAM upgrade happened during the wait and was quite essential. i'm looking forward to the pandora a lot, but....

i have now preordered (yeah, i'm learning resistant) a umid BZ, which is really the device for my personal needs. it has 3g, a larger screen resolution, vga out and a bit more ram and - as much as i hate to admit that it is an advantage - an x86 cpu. so that's the machine i'll probably end up using, but who knows. maybe the pandora will beat that thing.

anyways, i meanwhile am so used to browsing these forums that i am already thinking i'll miss it once the device arrives. was quite some experience and on another level - as i am professionally involved quite a bit in a project with custom hardware design - it is very interesting for me to watch the progress of this one. also, i do not fear for the pandoras relevance. as a console that is. there is no competition in sight. a year ago or so i was grinding my teeth because there was the remote possibility that with an early 09 release it would have scored a lot outside this niche market. it then would have been the only reasonable pocket computer, the only new gen arm device with keyboard, the only small computer with 10+ hours of battery life. well, that is over now. the new netbook generations, the smartbooks, the netwalker. a lot of stuff has happenedsince then. now it will probably be good, but not astonishingly so. as a console it will have quite some lifespan still (this christmas there was a ps3, an xbox360 and a wii among the christmas presents of my nephews and nieces and it was considered cutting edge by all of them) and as i understood the team never aimed higher and even was kind of afraid about a too large scale success.

ah, should stop rambling, nobody is interested in this crap anyway.

i'm in it for a while to, but don't you think the project will crash after too much time of no products being shipped / made? don't you think that they'll eventually run out of funds, especially with so many people asking for refunds?

 

[mali]

i'm in it for a while to, but don't you think the project will crash after too much time of no products being shipped / made? don't you think that they'll eventually run out of funds, especially with so many people asking for refunds?

An unknown number of preorderers has been replaced by newcomers over time and I think that this process will just continue. Someone would have to make a poll asking who preordered regularly and who ordered via mail *ducks*

 

[aesir911]

An unknown number of preorderers has been replaced by newcomers over time and I think that this process will just continue. Someone would have to make a poll asking who preordered regularly and who ordered via mail *ducks*

what's regularly and why does it matter if it is ordered that way or via openpandorasales@gmail.com?

 

[mali]

what's regularly and why does it matter if it is ordered that way or via openpandorasales@gmail.com?

It was just meant as an answer to your question if the project would crash It doesn't matter which way it was ordered. With "regularly" I mean last yearedit:2008 in the original preorder window

 

[hch]

i'm in it for a while to, but don't you think the project will crash after too much time of no products being shipped / made? don't you think that they'll eventually run out of funds, especially with so many people asking for refunds?

well, if you ask my totally unfounded opinion: not for at least one other year. i have followed this project quite closely ever since i first became aware of it and from all the bits and pieces of info i've obtained i get the following picture:

.) a customer base of about 3000 is sufficient for OP to survive the first batch. the relevant people are quite financially independent and the preorder money of about 3000 is enough to keep them in the blacks overall.

.) the customer base consists of 2 very different parts. one, which i estimate to be less than 1000 is die-hards who have preordered early and stick to it. but there is ample evidence that there is a much larger fluctuating fraction. if i'd have to take a guess, i'd say that at least 2000 people have canceled their initial preorder. but this must have been compensated by about as many newcommers.

.) whenever there is a major milestone completed, the pandora gets some realy positive media coverage (as i guess it is seen as impressive of a small bunch of enthusiasts dares to face sony and nintendo). this will continue i guess until the device is obviously obsolete. that's still a while off i'd say. and in every of these iterations, the customer base is replenished.

so i think the team doesn't really have to fear for cancellations. the only thing they really fear is a lack of visible milestones reached and the smell of vaporware. and there is still some time left before that might happen.

 

[aesir911]

thanks, good to know mali and hch.

 

[Awakening]

Primary things I will do on my Pandora is emulation, design work and surfing the Internet. No other portable device even compares when it comes to these three areas combined. In the pocketable market it might even be the best in each individual category right now. I can bring the Pandora with me wherever I go, without having to pack a bunch of stuff with me, and I can just pick it up and use wherever I might be (maybe not on the beach).

How do you know that? The Pandora is not out yet, the OS is still in the beta phase. On the other hand, the iPhone is out and it has a mature OS and superb user interface. Just a fingertip and every text on a web page is perfectly scaled to match the screen. The iPhone has access to the internet from nearly anywhere (I even get reception when on the underground train). The Pandora has a higher resolution screen, but will it surpass the user experience of other decives? I think ED wrote on the German forum that Apple must have a whole army of developers to make their iPhone software that good. He wrote that they are still struggling to clean the Pandora OS from easily noticeable bugs.

There is no other portable device that does emulation as well as the Pandora, I don't think anyone will argue on that. Touchscreen, keyboard and screen size are all aspects of the Pandora that combined makes it a good designer's tool. I have not used an iPhone and I do not know how well it handles the web, but for me Internet is half browsing and half writing and I rather have a keyboard for that. As for connectivity that is another story, but also not what I meant.

 

[cobaltage]

IMO, even if everyone who pre-ordered canceled but the Pandora still came out anytime this year, they would be able to sell the entire first batch in a few weeks with no problem.

 

[Eternalodyssey]

Nope. Expectations have not changed. Still as excited about the device as I was when it was first announced. As a first batcher it will be awesome when we finally do have that thing in our hot little hands but until then there are plenty of other things to do. Like ride my motorcycle. And, well, ride my motorcycle!

 

[Azure]

My expectations have slightly increased due to all of these delays. At the time of pre-ordering, I was expecting a device that physically/aesthetically would not be up to par to those types of devices put out by the big boys (Sony, Nintendo, etc.). However, since so much time has been put into "perfecting" the Pandora (and the OP team has been referring to the shortcomings of other commercial devices to justify the time spent polishing the Pandora), I expect the build quality of the Pandora to be on par with devices put out by any large corporation. When I finally get my unit, I plan to evaluate it with the same scrutiny as I would any other commercial device.

 

[Shadowcat]

I first heard about Pandora about eight months ago, when I was pondering getting a hand-held, and decided to have another look at the GP2X, whereupon I found out about the Wiz, and then about the Pandora, at which point I promptly forgot about the other options.

I didn't pre-order, though. As nice as the system sounded, I wasn't prepared to put down that much money without seeing some actual reviews confirming that the device was as good as it was made out to be. If the design and build quality weren't good enough, then it could easily wind up being a disappointment, and all that nice hardware something of a waste.

In the intervening months (most especially the last couple), my expectations (as opposed to plain old hopes) have most definitely increased. It has become abundantly clear that the OP team is dedicated to producing a device of genuine quality, to the point where I am now seriously considering putting in a pre-order after all (which might be moot at this point, unless some people really do cancel).

So while no one likes waiting (and obviously the OP team was incredibly over-optimistic at the start), the reasons for the most recent delays on this project have pretty much convinced me that Pandora really will live up to its hype. In short, I'm more excited about the Pandora than ever.

 

[danielliu88888]

haven't really changed at all

 

[VRAndy]

But for me, my expectations have changed a little. To be my 'dream' portable system, it would really need 3G/HSDPA. Other small things that would make it for me are things like integrated GPS. Also, with almost 2 years gone by, 600mhz is looking like a bit less than it sounded in 2008. (But it still really surprises me that PSone and N64 are withing reach for that chip)

In my mind it's gone from "Coolest piece of tech available." to "Slightly more capable then all those phones everyone has, but in a somewhat preferable form factor."

Still something I want though, because my Palm III isn't really an acceptable portable computing solution, and I'm not into phones much.
The fact that it runs Linux and not some proprietary thing is also still a plus.


Really the delay has just made me more worried about the final quality. (Some people seem to take the reverse view though.) When they told us two months of work were left in the project, we took them at face value. Now it's very clear that, even not counting the delays with the banks and the Chinese factories, they had much, much more work to do. Say, at least 10 months. If we assume good faith and assume that they weren't lieing to us, they simply miss-estimated because of their inexperience in this field, then it just makes me wonder about what 'other' mistakes have been made that the OP team is too inexperienced to catch.

-Andy

 

[OrR]

Im curious to know.. In the past 2 years, how have your guys' expectations/desires changed, for a dream portable system?

-infrared
+capacitive touch

Of course, the Pandora was always missing phone, GPS and camera.

It's still easily the best design out there for portable gaming and will probably be for some time. Put a proper smartphone (Pre, N900) in the other pocket, and you've got all you'll ever need on the go.

 

[Nintendo]

Apologies for the off-topic talk.

It sounds like you might be looking for something like I just bought. It's called a viliv and it has 3G and an excellent intregrated GPS built in. Also runs a 1.33 processor and has 1GB of ram. http://www.myviliv.c.../product/s5.asp

Lol, it's disappointing.

• No keyboard
• No mouse pointer
• No MIC or MIC in
• No SD slot
• No Webcam
• battery life indication
• No HDD light

The second problem is the lack of mouse pointer. The joystick is a cursor button that can be turned into an 8-way mouse steering stick but compared to the touch pointer on the Wibrain, this is annoying. I’ve had to attach the lanyard pointer, boost the font sizes and I’ll probably run a greesemonkey script to increase font sizes for all web page links but I know it’s never going to be as comfortable as the pointer on the Wibrain. The annoying thing is that there’s space on the frame. A lot of users are going to find this an issue, especially if Viliv don’t make them aware of the optimisations that can be done. Mic input. Up until now I haven’t found a built-in mic of any way to connect an analogue mic. The only thing that’s working is a USB mic. This seems silly for a device that will run Skype like a dream.

The battery life indicator isn’t feeding back the remaining time correctly. Something’s wrong with the battery or ACPI module. It’s not a deal-breaker when you have 6.5 hours screen-on, wifi on battery life but it’s annoying. The same applies for the lack of SD card slot and Webcam. You can work around these issues but for some people, they could be deal breakers. For me, the missing SD card slot is a real issue.

http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/03/viliv-s5-umpc-detailed-first-impressions/

 

[marshal]

6.5h battery life with wifi on sounds pretty impressive for a 395g atom powered device.
apparently it cost more than $600 so it's a lot more expensive than the Pandora.

I definitely can see the Pandora becoming under attack on the mini computer front in the future. There will be a lot of device coming out in 2010.
That being said as far as gaming is concerned (or should I say gaming/mini pc hybrid) it should continue to be quite special.

The is no denying all the delay are somewhat hurting the potential of the Pandora.

 

[gaterooze]

My expectations have slightly increased due to all of these delays. At the time of pre-ordering, I was expecting a device that physically/aesthetically would not be up to par to those types of devices put out by the big boys (Sony, Nintendo, etc.). However, since so much time has been put into "perfecting" the Pandora (and the OP team has been referring to the shortcomings of other commercial devices to justify the time spent polishing the Pandora), I expect the build quality of the Pandora to be on par with devices put out by any large corporation. When I finally get my unit, I plan to evaluate it with the same scrutiny as I would any other commercial device.

I think that sums up how I feel, too. I was expecting a "hobby" device before, but now I'm hoping for something every bit as solid as a DS. I know the software will still have some teething to go, but after x68000's review it's looking good to satisfy on the hardware front.

 

[Sphinxter]

Read this and quit asking for a damn camera.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8460899.stm

 

[Gilrad]

.) a customer base of about 3000 is sufficient for OP to survive the first batch. the relevant people are quite financially independent and the preorder money of about 3000 is enough to keep them in the blacks overall.

I doubt that can be the case infinitely; warehouses cost money, interest piles up, and they are still quite a way from breaking even (iirc, even the second batch won't do it).

I am not so concerned about the first batch, as it is so close to being released all they have to say is "go" and I'll get my unit. But last I heard the lead-time for the nubs (and other parts?) for the next batch will be considerable, and developers that are in debt is a dangerous situation to have.