A new portable dubbed "by far the most powerful handheld in the world" has been confirmed for a 2008 release in UK by its makers.
The new 'Pandora' handheld, which has the fast-growing homebrew scene teeming with excitement, will cost £199 and will be available in UK in time for Christmas. Pre-orders will open on September 30.
Pandora was built to be "the ultimate open source handheld device" and a huge step up from the homebrew-focused GP2X consoles.
It's pretty beefy, too, with a 600+ MHz CPU and OpenGL 2.0 3D graphics hardware, along with a 800x480 resolution screen, Wifi, Bluetooth, and more connectors and memory stick ports than you need. Oh, plus twin analogue controls and a full keyboard.
All that on a console "roughly" the size of a DS, it says on the official site.
It won't share the commercial success of DS or PSP (not even close), but will go head-to-head with the latest GP2X console, the far more attractive 'Wiz', also out this year.
The thing is these are never released with the expectations of taking on the mainstream portables, there was an article about the gp2x in Edge recently where the guys who created Pandora basically said that. This is created for a niche market, where it does pretty well. The only problem I see now is the fact that the hacked PSP is a possible contender against it, since it can play commercial games, as well as most of the homebrew stuff/emulators that make this worth it (Although there's still not a decent SNES emulator for PSP).
Actually a really good piece of journalism from CVG here. Not sensationalist or dismissive of it & its niche market at all. They forgot to add the pics of it at the bottom though.. Aaaah!
Now all I have to decide is whether to get this or the new GP2X. This is slightly more powerful but the 'Wiz' has a touch screen. Hmm..
You can overclock the Pandora to 900mhz so its a little more than 'slightly' more powerful plus the Pandora also has a touchscreen, and much better controls, so there should be no real choice here!
But without actual dedicated support and it's own line of games, it's going to be a pirate's paradise because you can guarantee that 90% of the owners will use emulators. And those who don't will have an absolutely tiny list of games they can play.
Seems like a big wad of cash for something with limited appeal. But I can see collectors going nuts for it.
The thing is these are never released with the expectations of taking on the mainstream portables, there was an article about the gp2x in Edge recently where the guys who created Pandora basically said that. This is created for a niche market, where it does pretty well. The only problem I see now is the fact that the hacked PSP is a possible contender against it, since it can play commercial games, as well as most of the homebrew stuff/emulators that make this worth it (Although there's still not a decent SNES emulator for PSP).
This one is near perfect. http://pspslimhacks.com/psp-emulators/snes-emulator/
The thing is these are never released with the expectations of taking on the mainstream portables, there was an article about the gp2x in Edge recently where the guys who created Pandora basically said that. This is created for a niche market, where it does pretty well. The only problem I see now is the fact that the hacked PSP is a possible contender against it, since it can play commercial games, as well as most of the homebrew stuff/emulators that make this worth it (Although there's still not a decent SNES emulator for PSP).
This one is near perfect. http://pspslimhacks.com/psp-emulators/snes-emulator/
Yea, thats the one I generally have, but its a sod for playing anything that has Mode7 or specific graphic hacks (Chrono Triggers menu), so all the games I'm actually interested in playing play at a far slower speed :\
To all of you waiting for the PSP to have decent SNES emulation...
The Pandora already has it, and the system's not been publicly released.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5XGMrv25G0
For those who love the PSP for the PSX emulation it offers, here's what the Pandora can do with unoptimized psx4gp2x code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sx8CrVLW8
There's also been incredibly serious talk of a fullspeed N64 emulator in no-time, what with the ease of overclocking on ARM architecture.
The real joy is this: It doubles as a UMPC, so browsing the internet will be wicked easy with a touchscreen and qwerty. Not only that, but there have been threads about a 'Live' Pandora community, playing emulated games against each other from around the world.
100+hrs battery life when playing mp3s + bluetooth = hours of music only with your headphones weighing you down.
Bluetooth + 2 sixaxis controllers + tv-out cable = multiplayer console of your dreams, playing anything you want.
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plus the Pandora also has a touchscreen, and much better controls, so there should be no real choice here!
