For quite a while now, I’ve been following the progress of the Pandora, an open-source handheld for music, movies, and games. It’s hard to stay excited, though, when there’s the constant threat of the thing ceasing to exist. That seemed to be a risk for a while, but now we’re being told that all the hurdles are jumped and the thing will start rolling off the assembly line any moment now. Just thought you should know.
What are you waiting for? Get your pre-order in before the whole first run gets snapped up!
hmmmm. i feel like i would have been thrilled 2 years ago. with so many capable mobile devices out there, including open android ones, this feels way behind the curve.
oh well, hopefully i’m proven wrong. congrats to all that worked hard to get this out the gate.
In terms of raw power it’s not as cutting edge as it would have been a year ago. But I wouldn’t call it way behind the curve. It’s still the only open handheld device with full QWERTY & gaming controls – and it’s got a pretty special community behind it. You will see good things.
Yeeeeeeeahhhh, this thing is going to do as well as all the other open source handhelds before it.
How many people do you know that have a G2SX or whatever its called instead of a DS or PSP?
You are missing the point of Pandora.
It was never the Intention of the Pandora project to sell as many units as or even compete with the likes of NDS or PSP. The point is: It does not need to to be a success both for the people making it and the people using it.
It clearly is a niche product, no one is denying this, but the people that are interested know they can use Pandora in ways they can’t use a NDS, PSP or even a netbook.
OOGLY ! GOOGLY !
My point wasn’t that they were aiming to be on par with the DS and PSP, because I know and they know that they cannot.
My point is that such attempts have existed before, and all of them failed, I don’t see how the pandora can succeed, on top of that, I don’t see the point either.
Personal Media Players exist, hundreds of them, what exactly is the advantage Pandora has over the others? The only thing I can think of is playing some obscure/uncommon format….. if somebody writes a Pandora compatible codec for it, which should really be a nonissue since some of the most popular codecs right now are some of the most widely used as well, unless you are one of those that refuses to use anything closed source and insists on FOSS equivalents such as MKV containers, etc.
For games, as I already mentioned, there is no point as the library will be practically nonexsistant, not to mention many cellphones are becoming gaming devices now, as for emulation, Windows Mobile and Android phones have that covered as well.
So what exactly is the point of the Pandora?
Kudos to all the people involved who pulled this off. It’s a long way until you have a device in production, so this is really a huge achievement.
Having said that, my first impression is that the main design goal was to create a device that’s all things to all people. Like cramming every possible feature into that case – I would not be surprised to see a parallel printer port on the back.
So, this is basically the opposite to the iPad, a device where a lot of features were left out and that focusses to get few things done well.
Any idea what the price may be? With a “real” USB port and the right price this might be just what I need on the road. :D
330$ and yes, it does have a real USB port (it supports only USB 2.0 speeds though, so USB 1.0 only devices will have to go through a hub or small adapter).
First batch is more or less sold out, second batch will probably be available in a few months.
Thanks for the info! Since virtually any mass storage device has USB 2.0 this shouldn’t be a problem. Hopefully the price will drop a bit when mass production’s up and running. =/
I think they sold out of the first run ages ago.
There have been a few people cancelling over the last couple of months so if you are interested fire off a quick email and you may scrape in the first batch
openpandorasales@gmail.com