Best Pda For Emulators With A Phone


dosteridge

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I hope you guys can help me, because im stuck!

I need a new pda and this is what I need it to do:-

1. all the usual microsft stuff - word, money, calender, contacts etc.

2. a built in phone

3. camera

4. watch films and play mp3's

5. wifi and bluetooth

5. and the big one - emulators - I have a ipaq 4150 and use it to play spectrum, lynx and all the systems morphgear emulates (gba, gb, snes, pc engine etc)

6. it needs to be small as I carry it everywhere

Its not much to ask, I know!!!!

Ive been looking and searching and im sick of it now, so wondered if any of you had any good suggestions.

The main emulators I use on my 4150 are spectrum and lynx because I mainly use my 2x for retrogaming, so I had considered a 6515 but it has a silly sized screen so assume most apps will not work on it?

Cheers in advance. :)
 
Unless Morphgear changed a heck of a lot in the past year, which I severely doubt, it's still the amalgamation of quite a few awful, slow emulators, all C code, no ASM. In my experience, MD/Genesis emulation was still only perhaps 50% speed on a 624 MHz XScale (312 MHz ARM9 equivalent.) Without sound it came pretty close to full speed. PC-Engine was maybe 75% of full speed with sound ... NES emulation worked as well but was still comparatively slow, even more appallingly I had to overclock to use it, too.

PDA emulation options are still really bad, and Morphgear is easily the worst of the bunch. You'll probably want to look elsewhere if emulation is your primary concern on there.
 
Yes, ive been thinking the same, really I would just be happy with a good speccy emulator for when I get stuck waiting somewhere?
 
I don`t know why you wouldn`t just use the gp2x for spectrum emulation... I guess the only reason is, that you don`t want to carry it around everywhere with you pda at the same time. Also, I would go for a nice linux handheld. They are quite good and software is free. Also you can do the same that you could with a microsoft one.
 
Fishbong posted on Sep 28 2006 at 04:16 PM said:
There´s really good emulation of all 16bit systems + GBA on Palm PDAs.
I'm going to have to raise the BS flag on that one, but I guess it depends on what you consider 'really good'. For me, that's over 90% of normal speed with sound. MD emulation should be fine, same for NES/GB/GBC/SMS/GG and most other 8-bit and 16K stuff. There's no TECHNICAL reason MD emulation shouldn't be fast, MorphGear just has really horrible emulators built into it. (Generator? No thanks.) SNES emulation, last I checked, was several steps behind where it is on the GP2X. So playable for a nice library of titles, but sluggish for a large portion of them as well, and unplayable for plenty more.

As for GBA .. well, that's the part I'd really doubt. If GBA emulation was playable on a Palm device odds are that emulator would've been in the process of being ported to the GP2X already given their similar architecture; no one would be trying to modify VBA with static recompilation.
 
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I guess the only reason is, that you don`t want to carry it around everywhere with you pda at the same time

yes, thats right, I mostly use my 2x when im at home and I dont want to carry my pda, phone and 2x around all the time.

As long as I can play speccy on the go ill be happy, I thought of maybe an imate or something like that?
 
Fishbong posted on Sep 29 2006 at 05:09 AM said:
Ever tried LJP on a Tungsten T5?
Since I don't own a Tungsten T5, no. I can't seem to dig up info about this emulator too easily either since the author's homepage was on gp32z.com and is now gone. I can tell it runs SMS/GG/NES/GB/GBC and what looks like TurboGrafx-16 games. And from what I hear it's very fast. SNES and GBA I don't see mentioned, but I would expect SNES emulation is much like it is on the GP2X, and GBA emulation is just damn slow. SNES might be faster if its graphics subsystem is better written than what we've got with SquidgeSNES and NK's SNES emulator, but if that's the case, I don't see why NK/Squidge/Reesy weren't working on porting this over instead of bulky, slow PC emulators.
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 29 2006 at 12:08 AM said:
Fishbong posted on Sep 28 2006 at 04:16 PM said:
There´s really good emulation of all 16bit systems + GBA on Palm PDAs.
As for GBA .. well, that's the part I'd really doubt. If GBA emulation was playable on a Palm device odds are that emulator would've been in the process of being ported to the GP2X already given their similar architecture; no one would be trying to modify VBA with static recompilation.
Don't own a PDA, but I found this site: http://www.pdagameguide.com/gba-emulator.html
 
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I don't see any mention of performance on that page, unfortunately. When I had my PDAs with 312 Mhz and 624 MHz XScale's (rougly requivalent to 156 and 312 Mhz ARM9s in performance) I managed around 15FPS in some non-intensive GBA games. The best I ever saw anyone manage was around 24 FPS, with their XScale overclocked to over 900 MHz. Those chips are so completely technologically backwards, though, that at such speed most programs run slower than they do at 624 MHz and below, and RAM access mysteriously slows to a crawl. Your battery life still plummets and your PDA gets hot enough to make your palms sweat, though. :p
 
does anyone know if hp 6515 will run pocket clive ok due to its 240x240 screen?

also ive seen the jasjar, that looks quite impressive, anybody own one of them, are they any good?

Don't own a PDA, but I found this site: http://www.pdagameguide.com/gba-emulator.html

Cheers for that, an intersting read, but I think epicenter is right on the emulation front, so now im just looking for a good pda/phone any recommendations, are there good linux pdas.

Cheers :)
 
The biggest problem more than anything for emulation on the PocketPC and Palm platforms is more the control arrangement and the awful clicky navigation pad that is nothing close to a substitute for a real D-Pad or stick of any sort.

As for Linux, I don't know of many that run Linux natively ... but there's a linux project for most popular PDAs, it seems. Just google for "Linux on _________" and stick your PDA's general model or series in there and you are sure to turn up something.
 
Ive bought an xda exec, nifty bit of kit, but I wont be using it for emulation. Pockclive (spectrum) works on the xda exec but its slow as hell and difficult to control:( , but who cares when I have a 2x anyway, I was only getting my savestates confused :)

Edit:typo's
 
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