New handheld, much more than a gaming device

PogMoThoin

Bulktohulk wrote: »

I'm not some blind apple fanboy,and I know the iPad is lacking in a lot of areas. If I had to choose between my sleek tablet though, that's replaced my laptop for a lot of the daily stuff or that brick, I know which I'd go with. When there's a tablet I consider better on the market, I'll mostly likely replace the iPad. Until then, it's doing me fine, and it's a fine piece of design. A limited fine piece of design albeit, but it's certainly fun to use.

Thanks for calling me a sheep by the way, real mature. I bought the iPad because I can afford it and because I wanted a tablet that doesn't run a full pc operating system, which is not the way tablets should go. It's the first apple product I've bought in years(the only other apple product I own is a 5 year old iMac). My current phone is a HTC and my next will be a Dell. So please don't jump to conclusions.

Baa!

Sorry, but there are lots of android devices appearing for much less money which have ports and aren't purposely gimped like the iPad.

Anyway, this thread is about an open gaming device, the ipad can't be classed as a gaming device (though Apple would like it classed as such) so its wrong to compare. Compare it to a DS or a PSP and its a winner as it emulates all other handhelds and older games consoles. I can see it being a winner, in fact I'd probably buy one.

Bulktohulk

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Baa!

Sorry, but there are lots of android devices appearing for much less money which have ports and aren't purposely gimped like the iPad.

Anyway, this thread is about an open gaming device, the ipad can't be classed as a gaming device (though Apple would like it classed as such) so its wrong to compare. Compare it to a DS or a PSP and its a winner as it emulates all other handhelds and older games consoles. I can see it being a winner, in fact I'd probably buy one.

Not really a fan of Android tbh, which is why I'm looking forward to Windows Phone 7 so much. It's a pity though that Microsoft are being so stubborn and committing to only putting Windows 7 on tablets and not Windows Phone 7. A Windows Phone 7 tablet would have me throwing out my iPad in a flash.

Someone else compared it to the ipad earlier, that's the only reason I mentioned it, I suppose they're not really in the same category of devices.

WolfForager

Dual Analogues?? On a handheld console?! That's just too practical to be any good :pac:

Your Airbag

Might be worth a look.

Helix

Bulktohulk wrote: »

Sorry I like my technology to actually be modern. That thing looks like a pile of ****e if I'm being brutally honest. Sure the iPad ain't the best gaming device, but as a whole, it's feckin sweet.

youre crazy!

this thing looks absolutely majestic. its boxy and manly, not like that sleek curvy girly ipad nonsense

Twilightning

Polar101

So.. why would I want to buy a "modern, powerful" handheld console in order to play old games on an emulator?

PogMoThoin

Polar101 wrote: »

So.. why would I want to buy a "modern, powerful" handheld console in order to play old games on an emulator?

Its not just old games, lots of DS and PSP games are modern, You can emulate these, You're not purposely locked out of emulating anything unlike other handhelds that You gotta hack them to do anything on.

noodler

Would games need to be customised for it? Or could you use any PC emulator currently available?

Interesting if nothing else.

Dozen Wicked Words

If emulating old games and DS games is the big selling point why not just get a DS and save yourself a few squid?

There are lists of emulators taken from

<snip>

Monotype

dooferoaks wrote: »

If emulating old games and DS games is the big selling point why not just get a DS and save yourself a few squid?

The emulation of old games might be worth the extra few quid.
It's like having a PC and a games console. In a situation where the games are the same, the PC can be used for many functions while the games console just (effectively) plays games.
Except that this is a little different since it's built on a different architecture who knows what it runs.

It's much more customisable and has all those extra nice ports so you can copy pictures from your friend's camera without taking away the card or being at your PC.

PogMoThoin

dooferoaks wrote: »

If emulating old games and DS games is the big selling point why not just get a DS and save yourself a few squid?

There are lists of emulators taken from

<snip>

A DS doesn't play PSP games

wayne040576

They're calling it Pandora now? I remember when it was called Opie or open zauraus. I had it on a sharp zauraus device (still do actually). It was a bug riddled mess and far too slow. It will never go beyond being a community project and something to mess around with as a hobby and won't get any dev support. You may get some emulators running on it, that's about it.

The best thing I could do with it was mount a 100GB drive from my linux pc on it over the network. Couldn't do anything with the files though as most of the apps would crash. I'm sure it's more stable now...

The inteface is based on QT, anyone who uses linux knows that that is the base frame work for the KDE desktop. Incidently the interface looks almost identical to what I was running 4/5 years ago.

There were loads of devices (most from sharp) that ran this a few years ago. They got very little support outside of Asia.

wayne040576

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Now that would be stupid. Whats modern about an iPad? Its a completely gimped product from the start. Where's the headphone jack, card reader, usb slot, HDMI. It doesn't do flash so no flash games and no Youtube. It doesn't emulate anything so its useless for any gaming other than with whats on the app store. And worst of all the battery is glued into the case and cannot ever be replaced, remember the first ipods, batteries went in them within a few mths.

At least the Pandora tried to add as much it can from the start. At least its open source and allows You do whatever You want with it, install a distro etc.

The real reason Apple don't allow flash is that it would affect sales of $15 mini-games on the app store, the ones like those that are free all over the internet in flash. 75% of all the video on the net is flash. The real reason they gimp their product is that the sheep, like You, will buy it, You know they're already working on the new model iPad with one or two of the missing features

The ipad has a headphone jack and you can get component out on it for video.
Flash won't work properly with touchscreens. How do you handle mouse hover events? Youtube works fine on it if you go to the HTML5 site as does vimeo and many others. The biggest problem is on sites that use flash as an easy way to build a client side interface. But as I said, they won't work properly on a touch interface anyways.

You won't be installing much on Pandora either. I followed that project for years. It has it's own package system, the manager may or may not install an app depending on the state of the repos. You definitely won't be able to drag in packages from other distros as you need to get the code onto your linux desktop then recompile the code for the arm based processors using the cross compiler and pray that it works. I don't think I ever got a single package installed that way.
Again, other distros won't install on it onless they are aimed at the cpu family and even then it'll take a lot of messing.

witnessmenow

PogMoThoin wrote: »

A DS doesn't play PSP games

In fairness Pog, i doubt this is a viable option for emulating DS or PSP games. The PSP is a powerful machine, has there even ever been a decent PC emu? Lack of touch screen for the DS

dr gonzo

jazzymun wrote: »

runs Doom 3 at full speed

WTF?

PogMoThoin wrote: »

That won't happen, Its an open source device aimed to take advantage of free and open source software. They're just a group of guys from all over the world who got together to build a completely open device, it would be against everything they believe in...........

Not to be cynical but i'd say they'd maintain that position right up until they're handed a fat cheque.


Also not to kick it while its down, i certainly like the attempt but the build quality looks dreadful and for that price i think ill go ahead and pass.