Gadgets: Pandora Opens Up
By Jay GarrettAh, another week in the world of tech has passed. So, what's happened?
Well, nothing much really..........except:
Space tastes of raspberries, Leica has released a very white and very expensive camera, 1 billion applications have been downloaded from Apple's app store, Everest is to get mobile phone reception and it looks like Sony's PSP2 isn't going to be called that – odds are on that it will be called PSP Go!.
“Oh”; I hear you say. “Is that it?”.
Yeah. Well, apart from Microsoft going pink, Google adding Ninja's and the fact that Japanese scientists have designed a gel that can walk around by itself!
All-in-all, just your average gadgety week I think.
Now I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Pandora.
No, not the internet radio station! I'm talking about an open source hand-held gadget that specialises in homebrew applications and games.
This Pandora is roughly the same size as the Nintendo DS (actual dimensions: 140×83×27mm (5.51×3.27×1.06 in)) and it kinda resembles the Nintendo DS lite.
The Pandora developers have already shown working emulators for PlayStation, Amiga, Super NES, Atari Jaguar and Sega Mega Drive software.
The Pandora is pretty special.
For a start it was designed based on the input of thousands of forum users who wanted to create the ultimate open source hand-held device and I think they've pretty much succeeded as it's even able to cope with things such as Firefox3 or Quake3.
It's kitted out with an ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux, an 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD, 256MB DDR-333 SDRAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output to name but a few clever things.
It has an estimated 8.5-10+ hour battery life for games, 10+ hour battery life for video and general applications and, theoretically, 100+ hours for music playback (with backlight off and maximum power management).
Apparently there’s a number of Pandoras left from the first batch and if you are interested in buying one you have to email openpandorasales@gmail.com and one will cost you $330 (that's around the £225 mark).
I also really dig the developer's to-do list on the Pandora site - nice touch.
........
Jay Garrett is a a professional bass player and gadget junkie. Check out his blog GadgetyNews.com
Yeah. Well, apart from Microsoft going pink, Google adding Ninja's and the fact that Japanese scientists have designed a gel that can walk around by itself!
All-in-all, just your average gadgety week I think.
Now I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Pandora.
No, not the internet radio station! I'm talking about an open source hand-held gadget that specialises in homebrew applications and games.
This Pandora is roughly the same size as the Nintendo DS (actual dimensions: 140×83×27mm (5.51×3.27×1.06 in)) and it kinda resembles the Nintendo DS lite.The Pandora developers have already shown working emulators for PlayStation, Amiga, Super NES, Atari Jaguar and Sega Mega Drive software.
The Pandora is pretty special.
For a start it was designed based on the input of thousands of forum users who wanted to create the ultimate open source hand-held device and I think they've pretty much succeeded as it's even able to cope with things such as Firefox3 or Quake3.
It's kitted out with an ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux, an 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD, 256MB DDR-333 SDRAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output to name but a few clever things.
It has an estimated 8.5-10+ hour battery life for games, 10+ hour battery life for video and general applications and, theoretically, 100+ hours for music playback (with backlight off and maximum power management).
Apparently there’s a number of Pandoras left from the first batch and if you are interested in buying one you have to email openpandorasales@gmail.com and one will cost you $330 (that's around the £225 mark).
I also really dig the developer's to-do list on the Pandora site - nice touch.
........
Jay Garrett is a a professional bass player and gadget junkie. Check out his blog GadgetyNews.com
