Monday morning, I woke up at 7:00 AM and immediately checked my UPS tracking page. My Pandora was out for delivery. I waited for the truck for the next four hours. Finally, through my window, I caught a glimpse of the UPS guy walking up my driveway. I figured I'd be there waiting to sign, so I ran toward the door. When I got there, he was already back in his truck on the street. No signature, no anything. I didn't know the UPS was hiring ninjas now. Hands waving in desperation at the man in the vehicle, I shouted like a maniac the lines I'd rehearsed: "Thank you! I've been waiting for this package for one and a half years!" He waved at me and drove off, mid-sentence. I never even got to know his name.
Thank you, UPS Ninja... wherever you are.
After the rather pathetically unceremonious delivery, I took the package inside and prepared to make a video with my sister's camera. I will not torture you with the results. You've seen tonnes of unboxing videos; go watch one of those.
After unboxing it, I attempted to take the battery cover off. I wasn't having too much success, so I decided not to break it and to snap it back on instead. When I turned it over, I realised to my horror that it had turned itself on-- without being plugged in first! I had already strayed from the One True Path. I let out a few expletives, quickly fumbled the charger into the wall and gently slid it into the power port on the back of the Pandora.
I had a plan. I was going to make a few videos, make a blog post, and be active on the forums all day. Upon opening Pandora's box, the plan simply dissolved into a frenzy of Pandora usage. I don't even remember which game I played first. All I know is that I tried every single thing I had put on my SD card, about three times each at minimum, for about two minutes at a time. I had gone insane.
I am still insane. It is so hard to pull myself away to type this post-- yes, I could have typed it on the Pandora, but it needs to charge sometime, right? So, without further ado, I give you... my review of the OpenPandora on four major criteria: appearance, hardware, software, and overall BLOODY BRILLIANCE.
Appearance
I find the Pandora absolutely visually stunning. I never had an early unit, but from what I saw in pictures then, and what I see now in my hands, the build quality has improved hundredfold. It looks-- there's no other way to put it-- fucking professional. The professional-looking logo on the top drove my sister to ask, "Oh-- that must be made by Nintendo!". "No!", I hissed, seething. "Don't you dare insult it like that.".
The case is sleek beyond belief. The matte black finish gives it an appealing, covert vibe... all the while making it impossible to muck the thing up with fingerprints. I truly appreciate this, as I have very, very sweaty hands. It is so nice to know that my Pandora will stay beautiful. I have a glossy black finish on my laptop, and I remember actually wearing gloves for a time before I gave up trying to keep it pretty.
I just love the boxy yet rounded look of the case. It's not a hugely noticeable thing, but I love the way the LED bars on each side taper off toward their outer edges. It just makes it look that much cooler.
The gaming controls have alluring definition. I love the way the nubs and the three special buttons (alt, ctrl, meta/"pandora") all lie within a recessed, outlined oval. The circular edge of the nubs looks really cool, and the topography of the nubs is a nice touch.
The keyboard is unique. Instead of the keys being all together, there's a noticeable gap between them, and I think it's awesome. It's reminiscent of a couple of the older computers I've used, back when the keyboard was part of the unit itself. The keys are a beautiful, reflective black. The combination of the shiny keys with the matte black case and controls just really jumps out and says, "Hey! Look at me! I'm fucking beautiful.".
Honestly, the entire Pandora has a neo-retro-covert feel about it that I am really, absolutely digging. You know there's some real genius-level work in the design department when the device looks as beautiful on the shelf as it does in your hand. Seriously. If I could resist picking it up whenever I saw it (and if I had even close to that kind of money) I would totally consider ordering an extra unit just for a display piece.
Hardware
The Pandora's hardware is absolutely brilliant. On the outside alone: Two SD slots. Two USB ports. An actual, normal, functioning hardware volume wheel, the likes of which I haven't seen since my Game Boy Color (It's "Colour!" Damn it, Nintendo!). A normal-sized headphone jack. And because all this is not enough, an external data connector which, with the right cable, will someday unleash the capability of visual output, audio input, and not one but two UART serial connections.
I'd like to mostly focus on the gaming controls and the touchscreen. The former are honestly the best I've ever used, hands down. The nubs are brilliant-- the time, money, and effort put in over the many, many months have paid off thrice over with these. I love having the traditional "diamond" of buttons on the right, the D-pad on the left, and the shoulder buttons. The only thing truly missing is the L2/R2 buttons. The Pandora isn't a half-assed imitation. The Pandora is serious business, guys. That is, as serious and businesslike as a gaming computer can possibly be. Wait, that made it sound not fun-- strike the preceding two sentences, printer.
I have not had any of the seemingly common problems with any of the physical controls. For instance, many people exhibited troubles with the shoulder buttons. Mine are perfectly operational; for each one there exist binary, mutually exclusive on/off states, separated by a satisfying audible "click".
I could ramble on all day about every single aspect of the controls, but aside from the nubs, the Pandora's real champion is the D-Pad. Oh my god, you guys-- this D-Pad. I'm serious. Like the shoulder buttons, there's a click, but you don't hear it; you feel it. Unlike some other D-Pads we've known in the past, with the Pandora's it's easy both to press it and to know it's been pressed. Pushing it takes absolutely minimum effort, yet there is a strictly defined friction point where you know without a doubt that the hit has registered.
Unfortunately, I can't say these sorts of amazing things about the touchscreen. Honestly, you can't get away with putting a device on the market these days if at least fifty per-cent of the screens do not respond to touch, and although the Pandora has a touchscreen, quite honestly it's crap. Exempli gratia: hits register about forty-five per-cent of the time, and when dragging the stylus around on the screen, the cursor pathetically jumps along after it instead of following it smoothly. Using a drawing program, I couldn't even sign my name-- it was worse than one of those credit card machines at the supermarket which they haven't replaced in years. In the Pandora's defence though, it could possibly be a driver issue, at least partially... or it could be a problem with my individual unit. It's not a huge issue for me either, because I use the nubs for mouse input. I nearly shed tears of joy when I realised that my beloved IBM/Lenovo-style clitoral interface had returned, albeit less clitoral-looking and above the keyboard rather than in the middle of it. I hate touchpads; they need to die and split Hell wide open.
On the subject of wireless communications: I haven't tried Bluetooth other than turning it on, but I have wireless on constantly and it works smashingly. I can use my three major protocols (http, https, and ssh), without trouble, and honestly that is all I care about. The speed could and should improve as better drivers are written.
Anything I haven't mentioned, assume it works so well that I didn't even think to notice it. For instance, overclocking has been perfect up to 800MHz which is just fine for me. The SD slots, the speakers, the hinge, the LCD, the power switch, the volume wheel, the USB ports and the audio jack... they all work perfectly.
Overall, the Pandora is an absolutely amazing device hardware-wise. The gaming controls are spot-on, I haven't had any trouble whatsoever with any of the tactile input. If I were a touchscreen gaming junkie, I would be disappointed, but it would also serve me right for not leaving that sort of junk-food gaming to sissy-poofta devices like the iPhone.
Software
The Pandora needs much less improvement in this department than is implied by the community; for the most part the operating system is practically seamless-- I have only had a couple problems with the default firmware (the default browser sucks and the PND-mounting script is broken). It's a hacker's device anyway, not a child's plaything, so you can't expect it to act perfectly all the time.
The Pandora's firmware is excellent. The thing that needs work is the community-provided packages or rather, the packaging system used to distribute them. The entire thing needs an overhaul. I'm not the PND format's biggest fan. Honestly, the idea of a portable, mountable filesystem for every single app is cute and quirky, but it just doesn't work. For instance, if I install a program, I expect that program to show up in a context menu for a file type it's associated with. Nope. Doesn't happen. I can't even run the apps from the terminal!!! I've gotten so irritated with the PND system already that I've installed the OS to an SD card and will probably never touch the NAND again. In my opinion, the entire NAND idea should have been scrapped and replaced with an accessible but hidden microSD card. That way, upgrades would be easy, we wouldn't have to muck around with the NAND (don't use it! It might break!), and we could have done completely without PNDs and the Great Civil Repository War and had a decent package management system with central and community-driven repositories like any other Linux distro.
Here's an idea: why not have the firmware on the NAND, and use an overlay filesystem on the primary SD card for any reads/writes? Then we could use a normal packaging system. Actually, scratch that. The NAND is what, 512 MB? Just do what I do and run the OS from an SD card.
BLOODY BRILLIANCE
Here and fully present. I love this device and everything about it. Even with a couple of respectably-sized flaws it manages to defeat every single other device I've ever had, and sail back with flying colours on every mast. There is no such thing as perfection, but the Pandora is as close as it gets.
My suggestions for the betterment of the Pandora Mk.II:
- Better touchscreen or touchscreen drivers
- L2/R2 buttons and clickable nubs
- sed "s/NAND/microSD/g" (man sed) *and/or-at-least*
- sed "s/PND/APT+UnionFS/g"
- a USB-A port that works with non-HighSpeed devices without a hub/adapter
- 3G/4G/xG in-built mobile connectivity
What I absolutely positively love about the Pandora:
- openness and freedom; tiny-ass Linux box wherever... goddamn!
- community
- BATTERY LIFE... holy Hell.
- two SD slots
- analogue nubs
- volume wheel
- no silkscreening (geek pr0n at its finest)
- THIS FUCKING D-PAD YOU GUYS
- no rooting, unlocking and/or jailbreaking necessary to sit on the bus and play Kirby's Dream Course with my girlfriend like a boss
- EVERYTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks so much to the OpenPandora Ltd. team and the developers (and fellow members of the community) for making this UNIVERSE-STOPPINGLY-GOOD device available to me! I may not have my flying car; I may not have my anti-gravity belt... but I have my Pandora, and it is therefore OFFICIALLY THE FUTURE NOW.
