Things seem to slow down (with less blog posts I do), and that's true in a way, but untrue in another. Yes, progress has slowed down - which is normal for a product. The first 90% of development are fastest, from then on, it's only the details that remain... and those take longest.
We're now in that stage.
But while visible progress slows down, the actual background work is more than before, and hasn't slowed down a bit.
It's quite a lot of things to tell you about, and surely a lot to discuss about as well. So I'll do one post per day now for the next few days with small snippets :)
Let's start with...
1. The Case -----------
The case company is currently tweaking all the issues I found (stylus didn't hold, speaker area needs to be finished, shoulder buttons need improvement (and an alternate design should be created for testing), battery compartment needs to be changed to fit the new battery, some areas need to be modified so that the LCD cable can fit, etc.)
I've created quite a list (including pictures and explanations what they need to be aware of when designing those areas)... and whew, that really took quite a while. You need to think ahead of all issues that could occur and explain upfront what needs to be done to prevent that.
I can't wait to receive the next case update - it should be pretty close now to the final version!
2. The Keymat -------------
The keymat sample we got was working fine (and felt fine), but the material was not diffuse enough so you could see the LEDs clearly below. I'm getting more keymat samples with more diffuse material soon.
No layout discussion from my side until everything is mechanically ready :)
3. The Stylus -------------
I've got an offer from Elton to create Pandora / Pyra-versions of the XStylus - but I'm not sure yet whether we should use it or not. I personally am fine with the stylus we got for the Pandora and have used the XStylus for the Nintendo DS, but it's not more comfortable for me, only a bit flakier.
The Pyra XStylus would use a new nylon material which doesn't break as easy, so it should be better than the NDS XStylus.
What do you think? Would you prefer an XStylus as default stylus or a solid one like in the Pandora?
That's it for today.
More stuff will follow tomorrow :)
Discuss about that post on the webboards: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/17064-its-the-details-that-take-longest-...