- Manual CD + PC Manager

- Quick Guide

- USB Cable

- Hand Strap

- EXTRA Stylus pen

In other news, EvilDragon (the German distributer) got a Caanoo review unit. Read more to find out what he thinks of it so far. Our review unit is on its way; expect some testing and a review from Nova.

I just got my review unit today.
Can’t say much about compatibility yet (I doubt they have included anything like that except for a compiled OABI_Compat-Kernel), but with a chroot and a WIZ firmware, it should be possible
I’ll try.

So far the unit isn’t bad. Didn’t try much yet and will do some videos.

The LCD has nice colors and seems better than the GP2X one. It’s a 320×240, so no tearing.
One thing that’s weird is that the frame covers a bit of the visible area of the LCD… so you don’t see 320×240 but a slightly smaller area.
Doubt it’ll hurt much, but it was weird seeing the MAME menu cut off

Boot time is really nice and fast, speakers are loud and sound good – though they sound way better if you turn the unit around (as said, they’re on the back).
The software itself is nicely presented and polished. It sure is a device less for the hacker but more for the casual gamer who wants to also watch videos, etc.

The analogue control is good. For classic games, a DPad certainly is better, but the GP2X Stick also was way worse than the analogue controller.

So much for now, will do some videos and tests later.

Craig posted a tweet last night. It’s contents disturbed me to my very core. Read it for yourself:

My disposable Pandora test pilot has just survived 1000 vicious openings and closings. Hinge still works. How many until it breaks I wonder?

After a bit of probing, I found the full details on the boards:

I’m currently holding a Pandora at a silly angle and ramming the lid open and closed over and over beyond the final click to see how much force and brutality is needed to break the hinge.

—-

I expect the plastic to break first, but it actually seems to be more stretching on the Pandora when forced, I can see stress marks starting to appear if I force the screen past the final click now. I’m just sitting here flipping the Pandora open and closed (holding the base and violently flicking the top part up and down) as it’s the easiest way to force it back past the final click. I occasionally force the top part back hard and hold it there too as far as I can push it.

It still works perfectly. The stretching has not got any worse in the last 500 or so slams.

—-

Done another 150.

I think the stretching might have just been the nature of the material. It seems pretty solid now, no change in ages, but I’ll keep going until it breaks or I decide it never will.

—-

The ribbon cable is [still] working fine, and the MP Pandoras have a stronger one again.

Sounds like a durable little machine!

Twas quite a few nights before christmas, and all through the house, no creature was stirring, not even Nova’s mouse (because I’m on a laptop and thus using a touchpad, STUPID!)

So yes, Christmas is almost upon us, and I was racking my brains as to what I could give you, beloved reader. So a couple days later, I present to you, THE BRAND NEW, REDESIGNED openXile! Basically the aim was to cut down on all the unnecessary crap, and remove support for a fair few the consoles, leaving only the ones you really care about (let’s face it, how many OpenMoko users really read this site?)

We’re always looking for moderators for the site so if you’re interested, get in touch.

A final note, to the winners of the crap games compo. We’ve had some trouble sourcing the prizes, but you WILL get them, I do apologise for their lateness. They’ll still be here before the Pandora though, I promise!

We told you we were not dead, right? Well, here we go with one of the latest news from EvilDragon:

“Your all waiting for more shiny case pictures, right? Well… we all are.
However, I did make a fault with my last blog post – as the pictures had been released, I assumed the shipment to Michael was on the way. It isn’t yet – sorry about that, I was so excited about that myself, I really thought it was on the way.

The reason the cases are not yet on the way to Michael is that one mould still had a problem with the shrinking. What’s that, you might ask? Well, due to the big heat and cooling off afterwards, the material shrinks a bit – and if the mould is not perfectly adjusted, it doesn’t fit 100% or will look ugly.
To adjust it perfectly it has to be done a bit via a trial and error method: Check where the shrinking occurs, change the mould there, try again, etc.
It’s nothing major and no problem at all, it’s a normal process in mould creation and shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. We’re still trying to ship as many as possible before christmas!

I thought I’d just let you know

Back to some got news: The board production is still going fine. Everything is ready for the big run, it looks like there won’t be any delay here, yeeha.

As there was a discussion about suspend, etc. going on at the boards: We’re working on a temporary solution as REAL suspend to RAM is pretty complicated and will definately take a while. Therefore, we include as much power saving functions as possible to make it similar to suspend. It’s basically the same way mobile phones and PDAs do work (they don’t suspend, otherwise you couldn’t get a phone call). With proper power management, this standby mode should long about 10 days until you need to recharge the battery, so that should be fine enough.
Of course, you can always shut the system down completely so it won’t need any more power at all

That’s it for today, let’s hope the shrinkage will be fixed really soon! ”

Credit goes to StalkS at GP32X for the heads up.

That would be it for the Pandora news, seems like we still have to wait a little bit more. Keep on checking!

Blog Post

GP32X Thread

Anyway, we want to inform you that due to several situations that are out of our control, including, but not limited to, missing or dissapeared moderators, lost internet connections, plain lazyness, etc., we haven’t been able to bring you all the news you may be needing so desperately.

However, this is hopefully a temporary situation, so we will be back on track soon, probably in about two months.

Until then keep in touch!

After much deliberation, and a lot of game playing, we have announced the winners of our crap game coding competition. Head on over to the page to check it out

Enjoy them.

Is this the much awaited video?

Probably not since it was made by MWeston. Anyway, as long as it’s Pandora related, keep ‘em coming!

The choppy sound is a (hopefully) fixable problem.

And maybe the most important, Craig says in the YouTube page:

There is a new compilation video on the way.

And we’re ready for that.

YouTube Page