I won't bore you with the journey up there I'll just get to the Craig talky bit.
The talk was very relaxed and honest which was great. Craig started off speaking of the GP2X and how he used to be into importing these quirky devices, with a big photo of :gp2x on the screen.
He then went on to talk about his relationship with GPH and how they didn't quite "get" the open-source gadget loving market that Craig was wanting to sell their device to.
More photos of GP2X design ideas with a sliding screen to reveal a keyboard, which were sent to GPH but they were never ready to make the changes, and this was the difficulty in working with them.
Then he described the frustration in trying to get the changes into a device which ultimately was out of his control and that's what provoked the idea of creating a new self-manufactured console.
Many early diagrams and ideas sketches were shown which you could see progressing into what we know as the Pandora.
Craig then explained the plan was to use a MagicEyes SoC and it was eventually revealed that it wasn't quite what we thought it was, and then they decided to go with the TI OMAP... which is what is under the hood now.
He also covered the difficulties in trying to build a product entirely in the UK... unfortunately no manufacturer is really interested to do this. So Manufacturing was done in Texas in TI's factory. Additionally he described that he has some empathy for GPH by experiencing first hand difficulties in changing parts and design revisions... difficulties equating to cost!
Then more photos of the various renders of what the finished Pandora is going to look like.
The problems of preorders and banking troubles were talked about in very straightforward detail. And things like "The bank froze our account and was expecting all the orders to gradually request cancellations, but all of the money just stayed there and the bank didn't really know what to make of that" It's all interesting stuff to hear about the story straight from the horses mouth.
Finally Craig pulled it out and mentioned the battery life... and mentioned about playing Quake III on it and it being very comfortable. Estimated there was about 3hrs of battery left there(7hrs of Quake III Craig?
)
Someone asked about multimedia playback, Craig launched XMMS and then I got to *gasp* hold it. I mentioned before, it is very comfortable. The nubs are easily reachable and I'm a short guy, with proportional hands. I didn't do much apart from stare at the screen and twiddle the nubs and press the buttons, but that's such a nice screen so much detail in so little handheld console.
A few questions were asked, some a bit off the mark like the XP question, and others like "Is you leg feeling better?" that only insiders like me would think to ask!
But there was definitely interest in that room and I found out a couple of people there had a preorder on the device. And I think I may have twisted a few arms to try and get one of the few 1st batch orders that are left!
Then there was PIZZA and the pub...
