Yet another pandora-sucessor concept

[WizardStan]

Don't get me wrong, I would choose DP over HDMI any time, but as you said, the end user price could weigh more as a deciding factor here.

Also the fact that "everyone" has an HDMI cable, or can buy one for dirt cheap while the cheapest DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter I've seen is $6. Save $2 on the licensing costs but have to spend $6 on an adapter? Might be worth it if only 1/3 of the people are interested in TV out and don't already have adapters. Many factors to consider, it's not a hard cut one way or the other.

 

[ekianjo]

Don't get me wrong, I would choose DP over HDMI any time, but as you said, the end user price could weigh more as a deciding factor here.

Also the fact that "everyone" has an HDMI cable, or can buy one for dirt cheap while the cheapest DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter I've seen is $6. Save $2 on the licensing costs but have to spend $6 on an adapter? Might be worth it if only 1/3 of the people are interested in TV out and don't already have adapters. Many factors to consider, it's not a hard cut one way or the other.

Its not 2 dollars you need to save on the licensing costs. Likely much more when you do smal volumes like the Pandora. I dont remember how much the hdmi license costs but if its lets say 50 000 dollars and you only produce 2500 Pandoras this means its 20 dollars per unit additional cost. Its not cheap unless you go into higher volumes. And who knows how much the successor would sell.

 

[Exophase]

Sure it's easy to make a point when you make up numbers. But it's not $50,000, it's $10,000/year + $0.05/unit or $5,000/year + $1/unit. And IMO if there's only demand for 2500 Pandora 2s then that'd be quite sad, that's a pretty small fraction of even the original's sales...

 

[ekianjo]

Sure it's easy to make a point when you make up numbers. But it's not $50,000, it's $10,000/year + $0.05/unit or $5,000/year + $1/unit. And IMO if there's only demand for 2500 Pandora 2s then that'd be quite sad, that's a pretty small fraction of even the original's sales...

Well for the demand it depends a lot of what price it will be sold for.

If it stays at 500-600 dollars theres no way it will sell more than 3000 units. Theres a lot of stuff on the market already, nothing like 2008, and since there are virtually no profits from the first Pandora this means no marketing again apart from the word of mouth. Of course I hope it will sell more but the pricing is extremely important. I hope this is something that ED is carefully thinking about while going through the decisions he has to make.

 

[rohezal]

I still want to know how many Pandoras has been sold worldwide ^^. 5000, 6000, 10000?

 

[Asiyura]

Sold or delivered?

 

[rohezal]

Sold or delivered?

Both ^^

 

[Binky]

@Binky


I know that this isn't a very constructive comment (and looking at the other comments, I'm in a minority here), but except the shoulder button placement and there are still two full size SD-Slots, I can't find anything I like about your case design. Especially having the middle section stand out that way is not very appealing to me. I know that you did that with more poketability in mind, but I doubt this will add much to that.


While I like the idea of including the speakers into the hinge area, I have doubts that this would be doable (size constraints).


Keyboard looks ok, but I do not think that we need a dedicated kill button, a key combo could suffice - the area between the nubs looks a bit "cramped" too, removing one button could "alleviate" that.


Having to "deal" with digital volume control on an every day basis I would like to propose to get rid of the volume rocker. As already discussed elsewhere most people don't really have a problem with the digital volume control itself but its software implementation. I can't really see any benefit in keeping it, but some advantages in replacing it (no seperated software and hardware volume levels, volume control through software, no need to remember the ideal volume rocker position, just the need to remember the step, etc).

1. I'm pretty sure tiny speakers exist, and are often used in cheap phones
2. How much space needs to be left around a nub for them to be usable, d'y'think?
3. What digital volume control? I much prefer analogue controls and designed this accordingly

 

[Neelix]

@Binky: There's more to language than letters. Where do you plan to put all the required symbols and punctuation on that keyboard?

The existing pandora keyboard doesn't have quite enough keys for everything as it is, so any layout with less keys than the existing unit is going to present a problem in that regard.  

- Neelix

 

[Binky]

but my second drawing (on page 2) has slightly more keys than the current pandora...

:unsure:

 

[Neelix]

but my second drawing (on page 2) has slightly more keys than the current pandora...

:unsure:

Except  you still need to think where you would put everything.   Your extra keys have special functions that you wouldn't necessarily be able to (or want to) overload.   Also you've removed two symbol keys and replaced them with a single modifier. (which should only have a single function) and the addition of the tab key doesn't completely make up for the difference.

I'd also want separate Del and Backspace keys,  which to my mind is one of the major failings of the current pandora keyboard.

In 2nd proposed layout I'd recommend making the number keys square, (same width as the letter keys) and adding another key there.   Also if you make each of the shift, tab, ctrl, backspace and enter keys narrower (they don't need to be that wide) I think you could fit an extra key on each of the top two letter rows. 

- Neelix

 

[Binky]

 

[Neelix]

That's better... in terms of number of keys,  though I don't get your obsession with using keys of inconsistent size.

You've managed to skew the alignment of the bottom two lines of letters though

I'd move FN back to the bottom right corner and / between L and Shift, to bring the bottom two letter rows back in line with the top one.

- Neelix

 

[patrick295767]

I would prefer to have 

this keyboard

the keyboard is so so so comfortable to use, and to switch between apps is like a dream

Furthermore it is extremely fast.

for gaming it might be also included somehow.

 

[Binky]

Do you have a clearer photo and/or a diagram of that?

 

[patrick295767]

Do you have a clearer photo and/or a diagram of that?

I have lot of handhelds.

My word is stating that this is best design (size, fast "cpu",...) ever for a handheld


http://old-organizers.com/MorePicts/MP64.htm

 

[Binky]

Looks nice

How much space to people thing should be left around the nubs/dpad/facebuttons?

 

[EssoAir]

you dont really need that much extra space... A little bit, but not much. Assuming the buttons are easily felt without looking at them, you dont really need extra space.

 

[levi]

To me it makes sense to have a little extra room around the face buttons. While I don't seem to have much trouble adjusting between different spacings on different controllers, I do tend to use the buttons my lifting my finger and putting it down again, so there's more scope for a little imprecision. On the other hand, I slide my finger around more when using a d-pad (which I guess is why traditionally I find dragon punches harder to do than shoryukens), so I generally don't leave the areas of the d-pad, so less need for space there.


Still, good luck designing a good-looking mat with more space around the buttons than the d-pad. I guess that's why there's traditionally space around them both.

 

[Exophase]

I like some grip space around the buttons too. I'd prefer a little more than Pandora currently has.