Pandora devs announce memory upgrade via confusing brainteaser

We'll be honest with you: we don't read the GP32X board nearly as often as we'd like -- but we did manage to cull from its archive this cold, hard fact: Pandora is now going to ship with 256MB of beautiful, delicious RAM, AND 512MB of flash memory -- that's double what we initially were told to expect, and Craigix confirmed that Ubuntu is now running 20 percent faster with the upgrade. This windfall comes at no additional cost to the patient, patient consumer. Our advice though? Next time there's a seriously righteous spec bump happening, try not to couch it in a riddle.

[Thanks, Jared E]

[Patriks7 @ Oct 30th 2008 4:19PM]

This thing looks purely awesome.. 2 questions.. is it possible to get it in Europe? do they sell them in stores in the US of A or only online?

[Think_tanker @ Oct 30th 2008 4:29PM]

These were all sold on a pre-order basis. I for one is going to be promoting the hell out of mine when I receive it sometime next month. Hopefully, a bunch of my friends will jump on board after seeing its "awesomeness" in person. As for the spec jump, most of us who intend to be a power user with this device, will greatly appreciate more memory for multiple tasks.

[Frogboy @ Oct 30th 2008 4:30PM]

You have to buy it from them at the moment but they are based in Europe (England to be exact). You'll have to wait for the second batch though. The initial preorders sold out fast.

[Frogboy @ Oct 30th 2008 4:42PM]

Also, you can only buy these online. They are supposed to have an American distributer sometime in the future but I don't know when that will be at the moment.

[Dan Fruzzetti @ Oct 30th 2008 4:28PM]

There's nothing like making fun of your customer base. It worked for George Bush!

[atomicthumbs @ Oct 30th 2008 4:46PM]

But it's fun!

He did talk about a reward for all the bank stuff, and he put "256 MB" in bold, then confirmed it when somebody asked. :P

[Flashpoint @ Oct 30th 2008 4:33PM]

2 Analog sticks and the ability to read SD cards automatically put it past the PSP.

I must have one.

[Skrying @ Oct 30th 2008 4:37PM]

Pandora is interesting. It's a neat little web browsing/emulator playing device. Mind you I never expect it to get big-league developer support but it doesn't need that for the market it's targeting. I'm semi-interested personally but I'll let it's community actually fortify itself (and by that I mean SERIOUS developers and not just people who will play around and never release good programs) and the device to go through the first few shipment batches.

[htd @ Oct 30th 2008 4:48PM]

to me, the use of this thing is really limited and the price is too high.

[Chris @ Oct 30th 2008 4:51PM]

Limited? It can have a fully functioning desktop OS on it. How is that limited? It has wifi and bluetooth and two SDHC compatible slots. It has TV-out. How is that limited?

[atomicthumbs @ Oct 30th 2008 7:14PM]

Chris:

Its limateed becaus it cant paly my ps 2 games. pantora sux becas sony can do PS2 with psp. but it cant do it wit Pandor?? Wat is sony thinkin?

[Jaybird @ Oct 30th 2008 7:24PM]

Do you atomic thumbs make it difficult for you to type?

[Jayness @ Oct 30th 2008 7:26PM]

Oh, the irony.

[atomicthumbs @ Oct 30th 2008 10:34PM]

Jaybird, you need to take your sarcasm detector into the shop. I think something's wrong with it.

[NoAndThen @ Oct 30th 2008 4:52PM]

DAMN this thing is sexy.

I haven't been watching this except now and again. I must say, this looks fucking fantastic compared to some of the renders i saw.

Does this thing have integrated bluetooth? V2.0 maybe?

all I'm saying is that if they can add an a2dp (or at least mono BT call support) chip and something along the lines of skype,I'm on the next preorder list.

Like, yesterday.

[PoisonedV @ Oct 30th 2008 5:32PM]

It's got a bluetooth chip. BlueZ stack, I believe.

[BigD145 @ Oct 30th 2008 5:11PM]

Would it have killed them to put in a couple gigs of flash for an extra....5 bucks or so?

[wootman @ Oct 30th 2008 5:44PM]

Where, as a SD card?
its 5$ for 2 2gb Kingston cards on newegg, giving someone two of those that they probably wont use is just silly.
They did also have cards available for preorder (Which is probably the first time anyone has ever preordered an sd card)
Also i would assume the internal memory is of a higher cost, and by comparison to memory found in the acekard R.P.G, (which only has a gig of memory and costs at least 65$) this seems like a pretty good deal.

[Chip @ Oct 30th 2008 6:14PM]

The RAM and internal NAND storage come pre-assembled onto the OMAP3 SoC from TI. You can only get them in certain configurations. The 256MB/512MB configuration is the highest they offer, and even that was only made available in production quantities a few weeks ago. This is as good as it gets.

[Benson @ Oct 30th 2008 6:24PM]

Adding in 2GB, which would replace one of the SD slots, is exactly the wrong move; that's one of the reasons I have a Nokia N800 instead of the "improved" N810. (The other reason? From the 2 SD slots, they not only replaced one with fixed 2GB, but replaced the other one with a miniSD.)

[bolezhinkov @ Oct 30th 2008 5:12PM]

if the company name is pandora, you're going to have to expect a little riddle now and then. besides, stupid people dont care about this device.

[grex9101 @ Oct 30th 2008 5:23PM]

The analogue sticks are positioned horribly though, anyone agree?

[fischju @ Oct 30th 2008 5:30PM]

Are you asking the 5 people who have actually been hands on with the completely custom nubs that they shelled out $20k for R&D?

[Benson @ Oct 30th 2008 6:21PM]

Nope, no-one agrees.

[PoisonedV @ Oct 30th 2008 5:28PM]

Initially I was really excited, but realizing the full situation, not so much. I don't care if it's a good or a bad change, I expected to get what I ordered... Theres still been no word on energy drain yet.

[Mongo @ Oct 31st 2008 10:29PM]

The drain will be minimal. The poster who said something about half the battery life was confused. When MWeston mentioned that, he was talking about separate ram chips on the board - not SOC.

[rmm @ Oct 30th 2008 5:48PM]

http://pandorawiki.org/FAQ for those who uninitiated with the Pandora Linux Gaming/Computer handheld.

[DiThi @ Oct 30th 2008 6:03PM]

@BigD145

512MB is more than enough to store the OS and several apps. I don't want more if I can already have it removable and upgradeable. Pandora has *two* SDHC slots. Any extra memory they put internally may became obsolete quickly, sucking too much power for little storage.

@grex9101

Remember it's about the size of a nintendo DS lite. Everybody who made a CNC or paper prototype say it's easy to reach.

@bolezhinkov

The company name is openPandora Ltc.

MOAR: http://pandorawiki.org/Pandora

[PoisonedV @ Oct 30th 2008 8:06PM]

Far from it. It's much more close to a phat.

[Xlar @ Oct 30th 2008 8:27PM]

I believe that he is saying that the Pandora is about the same size as a DS Lite. Yes, it is also at least as powerful as the phat PSP.

[fuscja @ Oct 30th 2008 6:06PM]

Yes, PoisonedV, when I pre-ordered the Pandora, it was described as a 128MB console, and now they have changed the specs! I DEMAND to receive what I ordered!

[rmm @ Oct 30th 2008 6:29PM]

The Pandora team said they would refund those who don't like the extra RAM and NAND(although that is beyond idiotic why anyone would have a problem with the better specs IMHO).

[PoisonedV @ Oct 30th 2008 8:16PM]

Oh jeeze, guys! That was really clever! Good one!
Like I said, we still don't know if this has any drawbacks or tradeoffs. Chances are not, but it's just not good practice.
Seems like every time theres a setback, a new feature or component is showed off. Yeah, it's nice to get new stuff, but it's not nice tob e distracted.

[Will @ Oct 30th 2008 10:06PM]

I'm still kicking myself for not ordering one.