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DragonBox Pyra Goes Up For Pre-Order

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  • #31
    The whole pandora/pyra story is very nice, I must admit, but why would anyone want to pay that kind of money for it with all those nice Chinese TV boxes around

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    • #32
      Especially when you can get Romanian stockings at this time of year.

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      • #33
        350 preorders in the first day!

        It seems that everyone wants the 4GB-RAM version, about half want 4G wireless.

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        • #34
          This thing looks tempting... accept for the GPU and the price. :/

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          • #35
            WTF is that web page? On the desktop the fonts are HUUUGE.

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            • #36
              Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
              While I really wish they'd returned to the Thinkpad-esque black they used for my 600MHz Pandora and I'll probably query the hardware hackers on the forum about the feasibility of repainting the case black, there's nothing else comparable in the "pocketable laptop with gaming controls" space.
              Case colour isn't decided yet, black/dark-grey seem to be somewhat more popular than dark-red.

              Final decision will be made after prototypes in various colours can be compared, there might be two colour options (presumably dark-red and black).

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              • #37
                Originally posted by kingu View Post
                This is a German made device, manufactured in Germany, with a case from Greece.
                Open schematics, gerber files, bill of material, CAD-files, the lots.

                ...

                The openpandora came out in 2008, and had a OS update only a month ago, how is that for planned obsolescence?
                That outlasts the average lifespan of a particular mobile device I can think of by at-least two times.

                It is up to over 350 units now, first day, and that is without any marketing campaign or dramatic piano-playing. I will trust word of mouth to the letter any day over buying into the hype and shame of advertising.

                The pyra is tried and tested, ready for production, no taking money to start a round of wishing and non-communication, which
                so many projects get into these days.
                While I haven't followed the story of the Open Pandora the whole time, the developper does have a pretty bad track record of not fulfilling his promises. The Pandora itself remained in developpement hell for years, came out with pretty weak specs compared to available phones even at the time (even less so today) and I'm prety sure there were some shipping delays comparable to what happenned with the Ouya, except those were spread over years rather than months.
                There was also the failed iControlPad2 kickstarter, which ran out of money after being overdue for a year despite having working prototype to work with from the start.

                Hell, from what I've seen, the prototype cases aren't even 3D-printed, they're molded in batch like the final revisions.

                I have literally zero confidence in the people behind this project at this point. I was pretty hyped when the Pandora was first announced, but now that I see it coming back and liik at how it actually turned out, I can't see anything good come out of this.

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                • #38
                  Since you brought it up,

                  Evildragon, Michael Mrozek, Openpandora GmbH, who runs the Dragonbox shop (on trustpilot and onsite) has a fantastic track record. Not only did he save the OpenPandora project, he also made good on promises made by

                  Craigix, Craig Rothwell, Openpandora Ltd. (now closed), who operated gbax.(now closed) Who was responsible for not only failing the initial US production of openpandoras, but also the IcontrolPad2, which Evildragon had no part of.

                  Craig Rothwell is no longer a member of the community, and has nothing to do with the Pyra. And he never will.

                  You couldn't ask any more of ED, because there simply isn't anything more you could ask for. 10/10 guy.

                  3D-printing is the cheap way of doing things. And has been used for development where it is cost-effective. The molds for injection-molding cases has been produced, that is expensive. Injection molding gives both better quality and the volume needed for mass production.

                  Phones today have no keyboards and the openpandora can emulate N64 just fine.
                  There is a huge performance hit taken by running Android. Linux|Gnu is a lot leaner, and makes the most of the hardware.

                  You will find the development model of just dropping a phone on the market with outdated Android left to bit-rot inferior to optimizing software and the Linux|Gnu OS over its lifetime.

                  The pandora was pretty hyped at its launch, meaning to say it wasn't ready. It was also the first device produced. Lesson learnt, ED wants to minimize risk, and not have to deal with uncertainty, so the Pyra is production-ready now, at the time which preorders are launched.

                  Moving production over to Europe is also a way to deal with reliability. I'm sure its possible to get non-slavery, quality stuff done in china too, but the pandora case was at-least on the quality side, greatly lacking.

                  Communication between ED running the project, hns doing the electrical work, and GC making the boards all within a small region of Germany is a lot better.
                  Last edited by kingu; 02 May 2016, 11:55 AM.

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                  • #39
                    +1 to kingu

                    I agree that it is rather expensive, but for a portable emulator linux device it is the best/only thing I currently see on the market. ED has been rather good about communication through their forum so there hasnt been total silence like the next story was kind make it sound like. It was like 400 I would buy this in an instant but at 600 I think I might have to wait until they actually start shipping Pyra's even though I really want to support the project.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by kingu View Post
                      words words words
                      No offence, but a product has to be free first before we can talk about that. If GPU isn't free (leaked code is still technically illegal to use), I'm not calling it "free".

                      As for the PowerVR, I agree it sucks, but the drivers for it were leaked, so at-least there is that. It is also on the part that is modular.
                      It is possible to run without it. If the blob-less life is what you are after. Get a USB Wi-Fi stick and blobless it is.
                      I don't give a fuck about blobs per-se, the issue here is that blobs can't be integrated in kernel and cannot benefit from fixing and updating from the kernel/Xorg developers.

                      the GPU isn't a bluetooth/wifi/3g dongle that can go and burn in hell with or without blobs, the GPU is CRUCIAL for any device with a screen, so yeah, I'd rather want it to be free in a device advertised as such.

                      Who is developing this GPU driver? Are they developing it (more like "do they have the source code") or it comes in binary form, straight from IT?

                      If they can at least keep the driver updated to work with the kernel it's going to not suck so much.


                      Mind me, I know that there weren't terribly better choices, I doubt that there were Snapdragons with similar CPU performance within the same price range of what they have chosen.
                      Last edited by starshipeleven; 02 May 2016, 01:46 PM.

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