New Portable from the GP32X Community

[Lazy8s]

A new portable device is being designed from within the gp32x.com community, with a discussion on their forum open to suggestions and debate.

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=38155

 

[zsouthboy]

PoverVR.

I'll be damned.

 

[Xmas]

Interesting project.

 

[roninja]

A real project or just a wishlist?

 

[Lazy8s]

One of the people working on this new device has shown video of an i.MX31 portable console they created themselves a while back, running various PowerVR demos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkx18kruRJs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAj0jHglGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG7EDaZpyOo

 

[roninja]

Seems to be a proper project now with TI OMAP 3430 as the SoC.

 

[Lazy8s]

The device is officially unveiled as Pandora.

http://openpandora.org

 

[Nesh]

That doesnt look like it has good ergonomics. Then again I could be wrong. Looks a bit like the DS btw

 

[Simon F]

Is this accurate?

 

[Lazy8s]

That's just a compilation of officially revealed details and some guesswork extrapolated from those details.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

What's the battery life on this thing? All the power in the world isn't going to mean a thing if the batteries can only last about 2 hours.

 

[Lazy8s]

It uses a popular cellphone chip, so battery life should be quite good.

 

[Ty]

Not that this is any indication, but the current GPX lasts about 2 hours on batteries, or so says a guy at work with one. Neat unit, I plan to get one.

 

[Skrying]

Not that this is any indication, but the current GPX lasts about 2 hours on batteries, or so says a guy at work with one. Neat unit, I plan to get one.

Two hours? That's horrible, not even really usable...

 

[Lazy8s]

A veteran of the cellphone industry, Texas Instruments, provides the main chip and the power management for it in Pandora, unlike in those other systems.

Also, all of the peripherals are custom made for handheld power consumption, unlike in those past systems.

 

[Ty]

Two hours? That's horrible, not even really usable...

Well it uses 2 AAs (I think), so it's easy enough to carry a bunch more. He just runs NEO-GEO and Genesis ROMs, which I think more than makes up for the short run times.

And if the newer one is better at power consumption, yay, even better!

 

[tangey]

Is this accurate?

The part about it using the TI Omap3 processor definitely is (I assume thats the bit you are interested in). A contributor to the forums is a TI employee and managed to wangle (sp?) a deal for the Omap3403 in low volumes. Normally TI wouldn't turn their eye to anything less than 100K for the Omap platform.

 

[Simon F]

Yes, thanks. That was the bit I was interested in.

 

[roninja]

how low volume are we talking about 1k? still Kudos as being possibly one of the first SGX implementations to be publically available, assuming it is released before the Menlow MID/UMPC's hit the streets.

 

[tangey]

Dunno the figure, all I know is that TI normally wouldn't be bothered, their entire Omap series is reserved for high volumes customers (read mobile phones)