Portable Pandora

[Dark Scyth]

It seems a very nice looking portable device similar to the PSP is in production. It has a touch screen and can run games like Quake 3. It seems to bit a bit pricey though, it'll run at $330USD. It does look like it'll be pretty good...but I'm just not convinced yet.

Pandora Specs

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colors touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

For more information OpenPandora.org - Pandora The OMAP3 Powered Handheld Linux Console

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k82bMZ3kMoI&eurl"]YouTube - Complete, working, portable Pandora.[/ame]

 

[InsaneNutter]

The more I hear about the Pandora the more I want one, Not only could you use it as a gaming device but also a mini pc to use when out and about.

Up to 10 hours battery life, Bluetooth, Wifi, USB 2... now that really interests me! I hope the final product looks as nice as these renders

I have to agree with Dark Scyth, it is a bit pricey but I’ll be keeping a close eye on the development, its defiantly something I would consider buying in the future once it’s a bit more established.

 

[Titcher]

I happen to have been following the Pandora since the beginning(early 2008). The community that follows the Pandora is the same community that followed the GP32 and GP2x. Both handhelds from Korea that could run whatever software people could write.

Now with the pandora finally nearing completion(keymat is getting finished up, CE/FCC tests being done) things are getting pretty exciting. The main lure of the Pandora is its ability to do lots of things, all at once. It's a media player with a 800x480 screeb(will play whatever mplayer can, except extreme stuff like 1080p x264), it's a web browser(firefox 3.0), it's an IM client(runs pidgin), it's a photo editor(GIMP), etc etc. The destkop runs on Angstrom and has a nice(customisable) UI.

The community around the pandora has quite a few very talented active developers, like ZodTTD who's one of the developers behind the PSX emulator. There's currently a guy developing a PSP emulator, although it can't be expected to get anywhere, it's possible it could with a lot of work. Emulators are planned for almost everything below PSX, with a lot of developers opting to make their emulators available for free.

There are prospects for some commercial games for the pandora, although don't expect GTA or anything. There's been interest from some indie developers to port their titles, bob from bobs game is anticipated to perform a port. 2D Boy have expressed interest in porting World of Goo and also Gish. So there's the possibility for some nice commercial games ontop of homebrew and emulated ones.

Anywho, as you can see, this isn't so much a review, it's more a list of features. Just to entice you, click [ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBW8qR0uRVQ]YouTube - Complete Pandora video, keyboard use, DS comparison and more.[/ame]