OpenPandora May Release Very Soon

Today I would like to talk about my most awaited upcoming device, OpenPandora. Above is a video from Craigix giving a demo of the completed keymats and showing progress on the device.
You might compare this to other handheld gaming devices, but also to PDAs...
For example, PSP or a Netbook.

Now, let's get down to business.


Here are the 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 colours 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

Compared to other handheld gaming devices currently in production, OpenPandora has the most RAM and the fastest CPU I've seen. From my experiences playing hacked PSPs, the limitations of them, and what people wish they could do, OpenPandora is like a dream come true.

First of all, it has TWO analog nubs, which makes playing First Person Shooters the way it was meant to be on a console. The hassles of playing an FPS with only 1 analog nub made the games unplayable. But, with 2 analog nubs, you can actually use the right nub to control your look, and the left nub to control your movement and strafing (Like anyone who plays an FPS should recognize).

Now, when it comes to trying to enter console commands, or anything besides just simply playing the game, the full QWERTY keyboard is a life saver. For example, if you have had any experience with playing Quake on PSP, you feel the pain. Now if you play it on a Pandora, you can simply press the tilde key "~" to bring down the console, and just basicly type in your command and push enter. It's like a miracle.

Other hassles you may experience, such as on mobile phones or other handheld devices with internet connectivity, the screen size and web browser support is very limited and painful to navigate. But the Pandora's screen resolution is 800 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall. Along with touch-screen capability you can easily click and drag elements in web pages. Not to mention the Pandora runs Linux and uses Firefox as the web browser, so you shouldn't have any problems with javascript or flash objects on web pages.

Personally, I'm buying one as soon as it's available. There is no "set in stone" release date yet, but the development process is in it's final phases at this time and it shouldn't be too much longer now.