Here It Is My Totally Biased And Flawed Review :)


Bosbeetle

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Today, well yesterday the 11th of June was my birthday. I received my pandora #62 on wednesday before my birthday. I really liked the fact that I got it :) My girlfriend called me when I was at work and I asked her to unbox it. I guess i had a completly vocal unboxing experience. My girlfriend was mostly annoyed by the pandora since I didnt talk much about anything else. Lets say it has become a great hobby :) So I arrived home and there it was in all its glory, I directly tested the L and R buttons and they were very nice both of them! +1 I started charching the battery putting in my settings and doing the first boot. Everything went nice and dandy, I tried wifi pretty instantly and it worked. I put in my SD card I had prepared and all the apps appeard. I installed hotfix 2 and the codec pack and of we went :) Fired up exaile and I noticed the sound was kind of static so I tried to turn down the volume with the wheel but it did not have much effect. I figured out my prefered settings using the mixer and everything was fine. Now to test some other software, i did put Micromen on there and watched a bit, Conclusion WOW what a screen resolution not a pixel in sight!! Okay now some gaming I think I first tried 'day of the tentacle'on scummvm it ran goreous point and click with actual pointing and clicking :) Then I tried giana sisters and the snes emulator they worked very well however the snes was a bit loud. So I tried turning down master volume in the mixer but it did not affect snes. :( I turned to the forums posting on my pandora and notaz pointed out it is very likely a hardware issue.

But that was not all I already said it was my birthday so I had family over. Ive been bitching about this thing for 1,5 years so I might as well show them the unit. The reactions overwhelmed me people are so anthausiastic about this device its amazing. The brother of my girlfriend was the first one I met in the train (about an hour travel) I showed him pandorapanic and he was imediatly hooked (he got a score of 14 that I didnt beat yet) so I started showing him some stuff the pandora can do and he really liked it. Next up my brother in law who was very anthausiastic about the hardware even before he saw it, he makes electrical cirquit for a living so he was following small bit of the project already, he really like the unit and especially the potentian it has. The next person was my brother a real rally fanatic and rally game fanatic and it more or less started for him game-wise with colin mcrea rally I showed him it worked fine in PSX4pandora and he played it for at least 20 minutes and he was glowing more and more, he mentioned 'I should get one of these the screen is so clear' Then came my sitster in law she was stunned by it she literally said 'I dont know what to do with it but I want one! :D at the birthday party Ive witnessed how intuitive the pandora is everybody was showing websites and other stuff passing the pandora around. Up to a point where my mom was pointing at stuff on the screen "unaware that is was touchscreen" and the website going to those things :D she was amazed internet was so easy. All in all I had a super party, and 4 out of 10 people stated explicitly that the will once buy a pandora.

Conclusions from my side: The build quality is very good, the dpad an action buttons are superb!, the nubs feel very natual to me (but my family prefered the stylus), the software side of things is also very intuitive and free. I like it more than a closed down OS where you cannot experiment. Software is soooooo nice I almost feel the effort put into it. Playing pandora panic really makes me smile being in the games makes think of devs like makoez and pokeparadox. This piece of kit is definetly a stayer.

The only downside is a non working volume wheel so I will return it tommorow, I dont want to let it go but I have to. I hope Ill get it back repaired as soon as possible because even if I have owned the pandor a for only 3 days I can not imagine a train trip without it.

-Hats of to you pandora team-
 
Another great review.

Thanks Bosbeetle, sorry to hear about the volume control, that sucks. Hopefully they will return it to you ASAP!

The good news is, the software will only be better by the time it returns. Hang in there.

Chris
 
Very nice review, sorry about your volume wheel! :) I liked this review since you passed the Pand around and it shows that it's not qite as niche as we thought.

Also thanks for the mention, a score of 14 for PP! isn't too bad, but there's an achievement if you get a score of 50! :eek: (Yes I'm still to unlock that achievement.) Hope you get a replacement soon!

EDIT @ gibberish: Yeah I agree it's difficult you have to tilt the screen to see the keys to type xD
 
14 is my high score on PP too... i'm gona get into bed and try to better it in a few mins. the spelling tests and mathematics are hard in the dark though :p
 
some pictures before I send it to its birthplace

62-1.jpg

62-2.jpg

62-3.jpg

62-4.jpg
 
Nice review, and thanks for sharing the PandoraPanic! experience!

highscore 14? need some training then :p . Tried again today, first game: 25. But i got lucky and had a lot of my own games this run, and playtested those a million times ;)

Good luck with the volume problem, i'll have a joust demo ready for you when it returns ;)

Cheers!

MarkoeZ
 
You're lucky, my birthday was June 9 and I had to go another birthday without my Pandora... good review though
 
I love how Tux is on the sticker. I was expecting the nubs to be unpainted, but it appears in the photo that they got painted as well!. Interesting!

I hope more people do reviews like this!
 
mali said:
^ The nubs aren't painted.

They are rubber on the outside, paint on the inside. That's probably why mine broke; it was made of paint.
 
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The note on the sticker is really awesome as well, it reminds you what the the whole project meant
 
Maybe now you'll stop asking everyday if you should be worried because you're in the range that should have shipped? ;)
 
WizardStan said:
Maybe now you'll stop asking everyday if you should be worried because you're in the range that should have shipped? ;)


no i will start again because mine now is going back to england :(
 
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Bosbeetle said:
some pictures before I send it to its birthplace
62-2.jpg
I noticed my name is not even on the sticker!

I only designed the case that holds the whole thing together, d-pad, buttons, minimenu etc!

WTF :blink:
 
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