Where did Craigix’s Pandora go?
January 26, 2010
Posted by: Butterman
Here we have our third independent look at a Pandora, this time from forum dev notaz. This is believed to be the same Pandora that Craig used to stress test the hinge and is also one of the first cases from China.
Pros:
- The controls. D-pad, buttons and keypad all very responsive and feel nice. I was told the dpad on this unit is “crappy”, but it works fine for me.
- The screen is bright and viewing angles wide (worse than OLED of course but that’s different weight category).
- The weight is ok, not much different than “phat” PSP.
- Hardware volume wheel, can set to exact volume level I want.
Cons:
- Few cracks here and there:- loose hinge, can only have it fully open or fully closed. I think this is the one which suffered Craig’s merciless hinge testing.
- Completely loose battery when it’s cover is open
- L and R buttons don’t sit right (1st revision problem)
- Volume wheel is too deep for my liking (a bit hard to move with a thumb)
- Some light leakage between light pipes
- Screen ghosting.. Yes there is some, and I’m very sensitive to it (as well as tearing on Wiz). I would even say it pretty bad in some situations, but much less intensive than PSP1000 (which I consider unusable for 2d games because of ghosting).
Notaz also noted:
Update: Just a quick snippet by MWeston posted in the comments.The screen on my unit is different from the final ones though, it acts a bit differently when booting, so this might still change.
notaz
… First revision plastic is brittle and cracks. The LCD is a B grade panel bought at a Chinese market in 2007 so we had something for our first prototypes. Craig beat the crap out of it and cracked it.
atomicthumbs
BackAssward
Butterman
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What's this?
Nice! Simple and to the point. I don’t need a story, just the details!
It looks a lot better than my recently dropped iphone.
This is the first time, a ghosting-issue comes to the surface, isnt it? I wonder how bad it really is…
Yes, it’s also the 1st time I hear someone saying the PSP1000 is “unusable for 2d games”.
He’s a sensible guy, for me it will be just AWESOME.
The original PSP is absolutely horrible at 2D games where the background is supposed to scroll smoothly.
I have a hard time imagining that people who have actually tried this disagree with that assessment.
It is a LCD after all. Everything thats not CRT lags. Not too surprised.
CRT lags too – the phosphor needs to have persistence so it stays lit in between scans of the electron gun. Older TVs tended to have phosphor which was much more persistent than it needed to be. You won’t get much ghosting going from dark to light, but going the other way round can take longer than it should and result in ghosts.
It’s not ghosting, it’s Hardware Accelerated Motion Blur!
Some games actually added some ghosting for motion blur effect (e.g. GTA3+).. kinda funny when you think about it
that crack at the base is really buggin me. Any info if that problem is addressed in the 3rd revision?
Craig cracked it….
The ghosting isn’t too bad. The PSP-1000 is the worst
I never noticed it on my PSP-1000, so I guess it won’t be an issue for me.
+1
!
I know GoW hid the ghosting pretty well. But Ratchet and Clank (which is pretty cartoony) when moving around it always gave me a headache. Any drastic change from dark to light is incredibly easy to see on the PSP-1000.
I remember Mweston saying he had a demo for testing ghosting and he didn’t notice as much. (white ball bouncing around black area) If I recall Mweston quoted 16ms for the response time, which is really the bare minimum you want to hit.
It’s clearly visible that its showing two frames before. If you look at the left portion of the fish, it’s harder to detect but the right side is easier.
So the panel is *probably* 16ms g2g and probably 30ms for b2b.
For Sonic games, blur doesn’t really bother me, because the game is about speed. And Quake should still look fine, because the game is mostly dark.
It would probably be easier to notice in a game like World of Goo. Handheld games are usually created with minimizing the contrast in mind.
It should only be a problem for a few games. Most games aren’t really black & white all the time.
Just in case people skipped Mweston’s comment. These results are from a Grade B panel. This is not the same Panel that we’ll have in our Pandora’s.
He said that the screen was not the one used in the final models!
Looks like the cases will be the crappies part of Pandora.
Have you even read the post? The case that he has was the 1st revision. Everything should be perfect in the actual production case.
I’d wait until a final prototype is shown, to make that call.
It’s almost a given that it will be at least a little “rougher around the edges” than anything you’d get from Nintendo, Sony, or Apple.
Not just the case either. The interface won’t be a slick, neither most of the software that comes out for it.
This is *NOT* a slam. This is what I’ve expected all along, and it’s what everyone should be expecting. I would rather have an awesome and flexible device that’s little rough around the edges (Pandora) than a mediocre, mass market device that’s perfect in all its small details. (iPhone)
Not only is the case a first revision case, it’s one of the ones that CraigIX tried to break.
I have no idea why Notaz would review this case. First revision plastic is brittle and cracks. The LCD is a B grade panel bought at a Chinese market in 2007 so we had something for our first prototypes. Craig beat the crap out of it and cracked it.
Keep that in mind when considering this a review.
Oh, probably just because he’s *GOT* it and everyone is curious about it, even if it is old.
When the finished unit is a hundred times better than we’ll all be pleasantly surprised!
well, I’m probably not the only one thinking about cancelling his order after reading notaz’ review and seeing those photos.
Good thing is most people trust MWeston, he should probably make one of his informative posts at a visible place and crush the upcoming doubts about the case- and screen-quality.
doesnt answer the question about the hinge though. craigix opened and closed it 1000 times and now it doesnt work properly… im sure he said in the forum that it was fine.
has this issue been fixed?
He didn’t just open/close it, he over extended it to the point the case started breaking. I agree with MWeston, I can’t see why you’d review a first revision case that was intentionally broken.
He also violently snapped it open and closed as well. Basically all sorts of abuse.
And MWeston said that the plastic is brittle so its strength shouldn’t be compared either.
Well this post went well.
It’s just a beaten up old prototype people. DON’T PANIC.
PANIC!!!!!
lolol
I’m not too concerned about this given the context MWeston has put it in. If it’s supposedly better than the PSP-1000 I’ve played many games on that screen and couldn’t notice a thing AND if this is a B-Grade panel and it’s all not final anyway, with the case I mean then I still just want my Pandora as quick as possible.
How far are we from the enar?
enar?
enar.
Thanks notaz for giving an unbiased look of the Pandora even though it’s of prototype sort. I think everyone with some reason realize the final product won’t have the CONS you listed. (Except maybe for the ghosting, but that’s been cleared up hasn’t it)