Preorders and refreshments
October 12, 2009
There’s barely a morsel of news to chew today, and it may stay that way until Wednesday. But there are some recurring questions appearing on the forums, so this might be a good time to catch a few people up on the current situation.
The preorder queue
If you’ve sent OpenPandora an email in the past week, you may still be waiting on a reply. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. They have received a flood of order enquiries following the recent mailout (and Engadget coverage). If you don’t get a reply right away, you’ve at least secured a spot in the email queue. Craig says:
There are way more *requests* for orders than there are Pandoras left, however quite a lot of the requests never become paid up orders.
Also people cancel orders for various reasons from time to time, so those become available too.
So it’s definitely worth emailing, and if you pay quickly then you are guaranteed a Pandora.
The demand is so big we are considering allowing some of the 150 reserved for webstores to be sold direct to customers, as they are not all sold yet.
How big is the first batch?
Some folk seem to have gotten the impression that the first batch consists of just 105 Pandoras. Perhaps an easy mistake to make, because we’ve waffled on about the “first 105″ so much recently. But the first batch is indeed the full 4,000, which is (roughly) broken up as follows:
- The fabled “first 105″ (these were built early to test the manufacturing processes)
- The 100-ish up for grabs now
- The 150-ish allocated to webstores
- Units reserved for media reviews, warranty replacement etc
- The other 3500+ preorders that have been patiently waiting for the past year.
All of these make up the first batch of 4,000, set to be manufactured and delivered over the next couple of months. If you get your order in this month, you’re one of them.
When is the second batch?
There isn’t a firm date on this yet, the only indication is that it will be early 2010. There are a number of reasons for the short break between batches. Lead times on components and the festive season / new year period are two factors. The team also needs to let the dust settle after two years of hardware brewing madness, so they can focus on building the software library and spend more time with users in the forums.
What comes in the box?
- Pandora + battery + stylus
- AC adaptor
- USB cable
- User manual, software CD
What doesn’t come in the box?
- AV cable
- Protective case
- SD cards and other accessories
(Unless you’ve ordered them, of course!)
What other marvellous and exciting things are set to happen this week?
Glad you asked. The preliminary CE test is coming up on Wednesday. If it gets the thumbs up, 3,895 Pandora motherboards (which along with the “first 105″ make up the total batch of 4,000) will commence mass production in Texas. But that’s not all. This week brings us to the middle of October, so we hope to hear some news from China about the case moulds. Golden Week is well and truly over and the factories are back at work. Could we see production of boards and cases start this week? Fingers crossed.
A week to remember
“All of these make up the first batch of 4,000, set to be manufactured and delivered over the NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS. If you get your order in this month, you’re one of them.”
… too easy.
Good sum-up!
I’m rather worried that they only seem to be allowing for a 3.7% failure rate (=145/3855*100%). That’s INCREDIBLY OPTIMISTIC in my opinion for the first manufacturing run. Something like 10-20% would be more sensible…
BTW, anyone know how many manufactured boards fail their tests? Cos that is often a rough guide to how many will subsequently fail after being sold.
I believe there were zero (0) problems found with the first 105 boards. If they can keep that up, 3.7% might be enough.
Also they may not be anticipating under 3.7% failure rate for the life of the device, just 3.7% failure rate between now and the second batch. If your Pandora doesn’t fail in the first 3-4 months it might be replaced with a second (or subsequent) batch unit instead.
Finally, keeping the number of reserve units low allows them to keep the price per unit low as well, which I’m sure many people here appreciate.
I believe Gruso was being inaccurate for the sake of simplicity, I believe that there are (about) 500 pandoras being manufactured for “Units reserved for media reviews, warranty replacement etc”, and the other categories were all taken out of the 35,000 other ones (I know the 100 up for grabs now are from that group, because they are all original preorders that were never paid).
So yeah that’s allowing for a 14.28% failure rate according to your formula-thingy I think. Although that doesn’t take into account the fact that some of those are being used for the media and whatnot, but if 10% fail I imagine that’d be unusually large.
d’oh!
That’s 3,500*, not 35,000.
Not that that 35,000 in the first batch wouldn’t be cool
Let’s do a little math on these various assumptions. We currently have about 100 tested boards, none of which have failed. You suggested that we should expect a 10% failure rate. The probability of a batch of 100 boards working flawlessly with a 10% failure rate would be 0.0027%. For a 3% failure rate we’re looking at about 5% chance a batch like this turns out flawless; so I don’t think the boards themselves will be a major problem. It might help that they’re fifth generation boards.
Hmm, actually they are assuming WAY UNDER 3.7% failure rate, because that figure includes ones reserved for the media too. It’s all going pear-shaped me thinks…
Please don’t read too much into my numbers. And definitely don’t start working out exact percentages based on them! The only absolute number I can give you is 4,000. The breakdown is just an approximation.
pantara will be ULTIMATE EPIC FAIL
The last I asked what the Yield was, Craig said he expected 99%, which is very high.
If manufacture test failure is 1%, then I guess failure of Pandoras shipped to customers could be very low to (in the region of 1-2%). Let’s hope that’s the case… I’m just a bit sceptical, given how quickly they are rushing the manufacturing. (Look at what happened to the Xbox!)
We should take Gruso at his word and not assume too much from too little data, but I too am concerned about hardware failure. I SEEM to recall that prior to the 105 boards they were having quite high failure rates – high enough to be of some concern. My memory is foggy but it’s tellig me 20% or over. For that to seemingly drop, at the next batch of boards (that I recall hearing about) to 0% failure rate is somehow both encouraging and worrying. It seems such a drastic improvement, and I TEND to live by the words “if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is”. So there is probably something I have overlooked.
I hope they keep enough in reserve to cope with any problems they have “in the wild”.
Ah – found it. It seems MWeston wasn’t scared by “a failure rate of at least 25%” but thought that “we need to get the failure rate down to about 3% to get production going full speed”.
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/45348-why-all-the-mysteries-and-no-clear-updates/page__st__30__p__670836__hl__fail__fromsearch__1&#entry670836
That was back in November 2008 – the company populating the Pandora circuit board may well have had a lot of experience in using what was then fairly new technology?
This was when the BGA size was very new (0.4mm I think from the normal 0.5mm) and had ~25% initially dead boards, but I remember them saying that most of them could be recovered by reflowing and they just needed to tweek the process so this wasn’t required (which I’m assuming is done).
Yup,yup,yup,presumably
I should say, I take anything Craig says with a large pinch of salt. “99%” probably means “98.1% rounded up to 99%”
My optimism has mostly run out. I’m just hoping they ship before New Years at this point.
P.S. lol, that picture up there reminds me of Roller Coaster Tycoon.
Guys, we’ve been in a Tycoon game all along.
Ship before New Years? Your optimism hasn’t run out!
No, only mostly.
I had asked this question awhile back and they said the reason they were cutting off at 3800 was to have 200 for use as replacements if necessary which would be about 5%. It sounds like out if 105 boards all 100% were fully functional. So maybe they think if they keep 50 or so it would be enough to cover if random issues appeared. I hope this is not the case as they could clearly wait until all the preorders ship, then sell what reserve they kept if they do not need them for replacements.
Seems everything they say is so vague that every single bit of information spawns days of posts and speculations. Why they didn’t just come out and say if those 150 (for web shops) were part of the 3800 or not is just ridiculous. But then again, so is the fact that we are supposed to get them soon, but no one knows how we get any accessories or even what some of them are yet (like the cases and power supplies and if they ship separate etc.)
I got excited a week or two ago about this, now I’m back to trying to convince myself to be patient, it’s still got a ways to go.
It’s a long ways to go. They have to make them (long wait), receive all the parts (long wait), test them, box them, and ship them (all which add up to long wait).
Nothing here is precise because they themselves probably don’t know. This is the first time they’ve ever been on the opposite end of the “designer vs. distributor” fence.
Oh, it all seems too great. I also hope it will come true.
I’ve run out of money, so I’m patiently awaiting the second batch.
OK then. So what’s the status of the AV cable? Last time I read about them, we saw a photo of the prototype. Any progress since then?
Same thing about the packaging and manual. Are those done already?
I’m not counting the software CD as burning CDR’s isn’t such a biggie I think, but then again, we’re talking 3500+ CDs
The batteries, I think they are already done, but if not then please correct me on this
.
As long as we have a receipt from the purchase, we’re in, right?
I ask because I ordered one, got the checkout receipt and everything, but haven’t gotten any of those emails. I’m hoping I just missed a newsletter sign up somewhere.
Yes, newsletter subscription has always been seperate to purchase ordering. Try going to http://openpandora.org/ and subscribe at the bottom of the page is the best advise I can give.
either i’m missing something here or some of you guys actually make sense with failure
Yeah there will be initial manufacturing issues – which i think will be more with assembly of units, the pcb manufacture and assembly should after all initial rev boards, be firmed up to less than 5% or lower as original issue was SOC size
its whoever assembles units i reckon that will cause more un-known ‘we aint done this before issues’
Only you guys could take a fairly benign blog post and turn it into a disaster scenario.
But we do it so well!
Personally I think it was a great blog post. Clear, packed with info, and stylish (from the headlines to the cute graphic). Very appealing and it mostly LOOKS calming, to me. Like the big words “DON’T PANIC” written on THHGTTG.
gruso+1
“All of these make up the first batch of 4,000, set to be manufactured and delivered over the next couple of months.”
Err.. two more months?
I’m just being cautious.
The first ones could ship within weeks, but it will take a little time for the entire 4,000 to be tested, packed and shipped.
Cautious would’ve been six months to a year. Two months sounds optimistic but I hope you’re right. I hope to have one from the second batch by next summer, of course, I’ve said that for the last three now. Guess I should’ve bought that F-200 instead of waiting for Pandora. Woops.
I wonder why so little news really…
Nearly 80 days to receive my Pandora ?
Whaouu Just the time needed for a world tour :p
But, I seriously doubt about it !
Probably because I have wait for years now, that’s so dumb when I think about it. Should have gone iPhone like everybody else or buy a Nokia super machine.
Maybe expensive but not as much as a year of savings
It’s Wednesday. Yay !!!
Any news yet on how the CE testing went ?
There’s a cheeky countdown on the German blog:
http://www.pandoratoday.de/
Sounds like the test is being done towards the end of the business day in Germany, which is a couple of hours away.
Unfortunately I’ll be in bed by then, and I’m travelling for the next couple of days so I may not be able to post updates. Hopefully Tom or Backassward will be on the ball though.
If all else fails, Screeny will have the news covered on the German blog. Just hit the translate button.
Thanks m8! They work you too hard !!!
I let you know if there is something new about the pandora.
Just visit my blog or the read the comments here
The countdown was a great idea but as always no given informations in time
I hope it’s not meaning anything bad…
I also hope that when I turn on my Pandora it will not show something like : Will be loaded in Two months
They should add this joke for fun.
hmm, its been wednesday for a while now, ah well I guess the update comes in two months.
There are some new pictures:
http://openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=15%3Ace-testing&Itemid=7&lang=en
So I hate to bring failure back into the conversation but I had a question for those who may know about reliability, well more so sustainability. If we do have problems, such as a broken analog stick (which is a common problem on the PSP which we all know has only one analog, nevermind 2) lets say, since this project is open source will we be able to get the information to order replacement parts/hardware ourselves?
I’m not one for sending electronics away for repair I like to fix them myself if I can and I’m just wondering if you guys know if we’ll be able to get the parts we need to repair our Pandora’s if we’d like to? I would probably try to share all the knowledge I gain on my site and support the Pandora on the Hardware level as much as I could. If nobody really has any info, what are your opinions on such a thing?
I cleared the way for someone by canceling my order. Decided not to wait another ‘two months’. I got a pretty prompt reply and will hopefully receive my refund check just as promptly. Good luck to all of you. I hope you eventually receive something you are happy with. Gruso’s work here was the only thing that carried me past June. Thanks.