Wow, Over A Year Late?

[bzar]

I have an N900 and it's great for web surfing and touchscreen games and light arcade gaming where you need to push max 2 buttons at a time, but it's in no way comparable to a gaming platform with proper controls. Controls is where it's at. I can play doom on my N900 and get through levels in ~4-6x par time. I can't even think of playing quake 1 or 2 with those controls. It's like trying to play a gamecube game with a tv remote.

EDIT: To put it another way, it doesn't matter that phones are becoming as powerful as the pandora. When it comes to games, they'll still be mostly "casual" oriented. I agree, there are some good innovations in touch screen games, but they're nothing like the stuff you can do with proper controls.

 

[Bosbeetle]

this tweet of craig says it all

http://twitter.com/Craigix/statuses/7945454248

"How I wish these cases would arrive!"

 

[Jourdy288]

@Declaration
I think convergence is a great thing! But I think that computers are going take over the function of the phone, not the other way around.

 

[OrR]

Convergence simply means there will be one device that does both, computer and phone. You can't really say who has taken over whom there... For example my Palm Pre is a fully featured pocket Linux computer. It also happens to be a phone. People might be calling it a smartphone but I'm using it like a computer most of the time.

 

[Jourdy288]

Exactly, more computer than phone.

 

[Illuminerdi]

Name another Open, Portable, Keypad Having, Game-Centric device that's even close to the Pandora in terms of spec.

Oh yeah, there isn't one. Closest competitor is the Wiz, and it has: 0 Analog Nubs. 0 Wifi. 0 Keypads. 1/2 The screen real estate. Less horsepower (especially in 3d).

The Pandora isn't the most powerful portable device in the world anymore - things like Snapdragon have rendered it weak in terms of raw numbers, but the Pandora is a niche device. If raw power and 3g data is all you care about - get a netbook or a snapdragon-based phone.

You won't find a single one of the countless devices in those categories that has proper gaming controls (without which emulators suffer immensely - I refuse to play games on my iPhone because of this) and/or is an open platform.

Maybe. MAYBE if some phone company made a Snapdragon-based, Android-running phone with a Dpad, Cross Action Button Layout, and Dual Analogs, then maybe you'd have a suitable rival. But I'm going to laugh my butt off at a phone with Dual Analogs, because 99% of their owners wouldn't have a clue what they were for. Thus it'll never happen - niche device, remember?

The closest competition is that Android-based other gaming handheld that's being developed that looks like a Wonderswan. Can't remember it's name, but even it is running the same processor as the Pandora, and it lacks clamshell, keyboard, and dual analogs, so I'd hardly call it "competition".

Even the next gen portables like the PSP2 or the DS2 won't exactly be competition - sure they'll be equal or more powerful than the Panda, but you'll have to crack them to run homebrew, and the whole point of a platform like the Pandora is that there's no cracking, so you can do whatever you want with it out of the box, even down to changing the entire OS. Android? Yes. ChromeOS? Yes. Neither of those will ever run on the PSP 2 or DS 2.

Maybe you should take a trip on a Zephyr...

 

[Vitel]

It is clear to me that the future is about convergence. Phones will eventually take over as the primary device for internet browsing and playing games.

It's definitely not my future, because I prefer the UNIX way: when a single device provides one particular feature, but does it well. That's why I have three separate devices: Nokia 1202 (a cellphone), Panasonic TZ5 (a photo camera) and Zaurus C1000 (PDA, which is gonna be replaced with Pandora).
Is it too heavy for you? Maybe. But I'm not a weak chick and carry 0.5 kg with ease.

 

[renegadechic]

i think most technology involve varieties of specialisation, growth, convergence, further growth and also divergence.

we are progressively seeing a more widespread social and short term use of the internet. social networking, email and quick dissemination of information through news sites and wiki type searches are booming and that is coinciding with the boom in internet capable mobile phones. that being said though, there is always going to be things people do in the online world which a mobile phone isnt useful for be it typing long posts on forums, extended periods of online chat, anything involving more intensive processing/multitasking/moving around a screen. so in many ways i agree that convergence is certainly happening in the technology.

what we already see though is divergence online defined by where and how you use the sites/services. we will get simpler pages (or simplified versions of pages) for mobiles whilst we continue to get more advanced pages that require more interaction and involvement. i dont see something like youtube as an advanced page. whilst it takes some processing power, it is actually the interface and interaction which is the limiting factor.

a device like the pandora and also devices such as tablesare interesting because they actually covers a few more bases than mobiles. they are designed to be able to scale up with attached keyboards and pointing devices, they have either larger screens for sat down use or they have very useable video out connectivity. i think that is where convergence and miniaturisation really excels and causes some kind of paradigm shift.

 

[grasshoppir]

in the future i think we will see much more sidetalkin

 

[TaG]

In the future I think I will be older. Well, hopefully as I don't like the alternative.

After a year out from gp32x and Pandora, it feels like stepping right back into the same discussions in most of the threads.

Anyways, hello all.

 

[mali]

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

In the future I think I will be older. Well, hopefully as I don't like the alternative.

After a year out from gp32x and Pandora, it feels like stepping right back into the same discussions in most of the threads.

Anyways, hello all.

A year? Seems like two months to me..

 

[Pleng]

It's definitely not my future, because I prefer the UNIX way: when a single device provides one particular feature, but does it well. That's why I have three separate devices: Nokia 1202 (a cellphone), Panasonic TZ5 (a photo camera) and Zaurus C1000 (PDA, which is gonna be replaced with Pandora).
Is it too heavy for you? Maybe. But I'm not a weak chick and carry 0.5 kg with ease.

It's not a question of strength; I can carry a 2Kg laptop with reasonable ease. Still isn't practical. I only have so many pockets and I don't want them bulging with 3 or 4 devices - not to mention the hassle of trying to remember which device is in pocket.

Aside from my wallet and keys I can only hack carrying 2 devices on my person at once, and even that is 1 less than ideal.

 

[Awakening]

All depends on each individual's needs. Me personally I want to be able to do as much as possible with one device, but I don't want crappy features. My phone does 6 things really well, it's easy to use as a phone, it's really good at storing phone numbers, it's easy to write and send SMS, the alarm features beats all clocks I've seen, the music player is really good and it has a very handy step counter with built in statistics software. I wish the camera was better, it really sucks and it's annoying to connect it to a PC and hard to get it working, playing games on the phone also sucks.

Some people want ease of use, things should be convenient. These people, like me, want a device that can do everything sufficiently. Some people want high quality and want to have specialized devices. While I want a built in camera on my Pandora for ease of use I'm not looking for a high quality camera for that job, if I want to do some serious photography I would of course want a real camera to get really good pictures. As for blending a phone and something like a Pandora I can see both good and bad things. It really isn't as convenient as a proper phone, I much rather use a small stand alone device for talking and sending SMS.

 

[borgqueenx]

The only thing that changed over time(with me) is that i will always be a gadget collector, and i want the best gaming console. So is another consoke, better then pandora is released, im cancelling my order and buy that one.
But 2 nubs, touchscreen, high resolution, clamshell and desktop aint easy to beat.

And my iatience is also getting smaller in time...low already.

 

[Jourdy288]

It's definitely not my future, because I prefer the UNIX way: when a single device provides one particular feature, but does it well. That's why I have three separate devices: Nokia 1202 (a cellphone), Panasonic TZ5 (a photo camera) and Zaurus C1000 (PDA, which is gonna be replaced with Pandora).
Is it too heavy for you? Maybe. But I'm not a weak chick and carry 0.5 kg with ease.

It's not a question of strength; I can carry a 2Kg laptop with reasonable ease. Still isn't practical. I only have so many pockets and I don't want them bulging with 3 or 4 devices - not to mention the hassle of trying to remember which device is in pocket.

Aside from my wallet and keys I can only hack carrying 2 devices on my person at once, and even that is 1 less than ideal.

I do actually carry around 3-4 devices at a time... let's see here, a phone for pictures, one for actually receiving calls, my Palm Tungsten T|5, my Sharp Yo-380....
Yeah, the Pandora is taking on a couple roles for me. I do think adding a camera to the Pandora2 is a great idea, and again, it doesn't have to be a sniperscope, or come with CSI Image Enhancement (see my sig for details). Camera phone quality is enough for good augmented reality games, etc.
Oh, and by the time we get to work on Pandora2, I'm pretty sure the cameraphones will improve quite a bit anyway.

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

I carry around atleast 2 stuff
max i can rememebr was: Cellphone, DS, PSP, Headset.

Right now its more like, Cellphone (w660), Cellphone (C901), and pandora when it arrives, + BT headset for one of the phones.
add in a couple of usb sticks, sd card, webcam, mouse and a small keyboard if i get one.

 

[Vlynndar]

I'm carrying just a phone. Motorola F3, the only things it can do are making calls and sending and receiving texts. I believe it's smaller than the battery of the Pandora.
What ARE the exact dimensions of the battery? I could have one of the most expensive phone cases ever

 

[bzar]

I'm carrying just my N900. It's good for most stuff, but only light gaming. Waiting for the pandora to fill that void

 

[Vitel]

It's definitely not my future, because I prefer the UNIX way: when a single device provides one particular feature, but does it well. That's why I have three separate devices: Nokia 1202 (a cellphone), Panasonic TZ5 (a photo camera) and Zaurus C1000 (PDA, which is gonna be replaced with Pandora).
Is it too heavy for you? Maybe. But I'm not a weak chick and carry 0.5 kg with ease.

It's not a question of strength; I can carry a 2Kg laptop with reasonable ease. Still isn't practical. I only have so many pockets and I don't want them bulging with 3 or 4 devices - not to mention the hassle of trying to remember which device is in pocket.

Aside from my wallet and keys I can only hack carrying 2 devices on my person at once, and even that is 1 less than ideal.

There's a thing called backpack. You may find it interesting.

I do actually carry around 3-4 devices at a time...

BTW, this is a subject for a new poll.