The “Pandora” handheld device, coming out of nowhere but described by its makers as the world’s most powerful device of its kind, has been touted for a Holiday release in the UK this year, at a price of £200 in the UK, $330). Never heard of it? Me either.
Still, having read up on it now, I’m kinda intrigued. Hit the jump.
Measuring in at around the size of a DS (with some handy photos on the official website giving you an idea of the scale) and with more power than a PSP, the Pandora looks to be all about the homebrew. Technically, it’s not even a game console but an Ultra Mobile PC, but the inputs the machine packs onto its body shell make it perfectly suited to such a task. Along with a full QWERTY keyboard, there’s a D-pad, four face buttons (think the colored buttons on your 360 pad) and twin analogue sticks. Take that, PSP.
Packing a 600 Mhz CPU running Linux, serious graphics capabilities, WiFi & Bluetooth, a wide touchscreen (that’s Nintendo hacked away at too then), two SD card slots and 10 hours of battery life, the Pandora looks to be both a pretty capable mobile PC (think the Asus Eee and you’re on the right track) and a decent gaming machine. It’ll apparently run “Firefox 3 and Quake 3 with ease” and with those joypad-style controls I think the makers of this machine could be on to something.
Of course, as it’s open source you can do whatever you like to it and install whatever you wish, limited merely by how large your SD cards are, but at the same time don’t expect utterly maximum performance. Like other UMPCs it’ll do its job but it wont to it superbly well, and I have my doubts about how comfortable it would be to hold when using the gaming controls, positioned above the keyboard and hence in a possibly awkward position. Then again, it’s smaller than the original Xbox controller (but then again every other controller in the world is smaller than a dwarf planet) so it could be more usable then I imagine.
Still, it looks to be an intriguing prospect (and definitely a brave investment by its developers) but I’m not entirely convinced I’d choose one over a PSP and a laptop, despite this machine’s attempts to integrate the two (along with a DS). What do you think though? Worth buying one, or would you rather keep your designed-for-gaming handheld consoles over a laptop with some buttons bolted on? The comment box is there!
Source: “Most powerful handheld” out this year – CVG
Popularity: 1% [?]
Is Pandora going to be a developed name? If I walk into GameStop and ask for a Pandora Handheld, will they look at me like I have a third eye? If not, it sounds interesting.
I don’t think it’ll be sold in games stores. Chances are you’ll find it in PC stores instead, since it’s really a microbook with some joysticks attached.
mhe,if it’s not desinged primaraly for gaming then it ain’t worth it,I better be off with a laptop.
hmm interesting…..nice find yamster
prehaps a good step forward for future ideas
Okay, apparently, you are all too mainstream to see the TRUE value of this. Come on. Homebrew games? That is just awesome! The fact that you use SD cards and a USB port, makes it just that much more versatile! I’m telling you, I WILL be watching this one……
I want one to do dirty, dirty* things too!
* by dirty I mean homebrew dirty, not THAT kind of dirty..perverts
cool i wonder if any of the major publishers will get on board with this hardware.
i mean its an interesting looking machine, it looks like a cross between a psp and a ds but more powerfull than both.
i cant imagine they couldve gotten it onto the market without at least a few promises of games from some publishers (not exclusives)
There is a problem with the systems specs. Were are you going to find new copies of old games like Quake 3 anymore?
@boringsupreez: It’s called bittorrent.
I love little devices like this. Game publishers typically do not like little devices like these since they are open. However, it seems like it could make a great little device for WiFi access on something I can put in my pocket. Cell phones just don’t have the power nor the usability for me to bother to do much more than send email and browse a mobile site. If this can actually browse regular websites and handle Flash/tons of image/and all that jazz it could at least help pick up the the ball that cell phones have completely dropped on mobile web usage. I’m sorry cellphones but 1995-style websites are not what I had in mind for the mobile web. I want the mobile web experience to be nearly equal to my laptop.
might be worth a jailbreak mod…
Bizarre! I found this product yesterday and geeked out over it.
Besides Homebrew it is also perfectly suited for emulation! I think they are working on PS1 and N64. not to mention all of the previous systems.
still a bit pricey but very interesting.
I love homebrew. I’ll think about picking this up, especially if someone makes a website for develpers to collectively store their collections.