This open gaming handheld reminds me of the WiBrain B1 UMPC. Its got some great specs but the physical implementation looks a mess! It’s the latest incarnation of a design targeted at gamer/developers wanting to run gaming emulators. Based, spiritually on the GP2X, there’s very little focus on Internet connectivity an even less on mobile Internet connectivity (no Bluetooth, 3G) but the interesting thing is that the core hardware could form the basis of an interesting mobile Internet platform. Its being called ‘Pandora.’ [Wiki] Here’s an early prototype rendering.
The hardware is designed around a Cortex A8 CPU which is a RISC design and, according to what I read, will enable raw processing power equivalent to the new mobility focused X86 CPU’s like Intel’s Silverthorn CPU.
As the first product in TI’s OMAPâ„¢ 3 family of applications processors with the ARM Cortex-A8 superscalar microprocessor core, the OMAP3430 delivers up to 3X gain in performance over ARM11-based processors. The new processor leverages industry-leading technologies to provide mobile phone battery life together with the performance needed for laptop-comparable productivity software and an audio-video experience equivalent to that of consumer electronics devices. [TI PDF]
With an 800×480 screen, keyboard, Wifi and expansion ports it will be interesting to see what sort of performance it reaches running Firefox and what sort of battery life it returns.
I’m doing a lot of reading on Cortex at the moment so if anyone has any pointers to other Cortex-based projects or reading material, please let me know and i’ll add them to my watchlist.
Via Engadget and a tip from TSO, thanks!
got to say, the pdf linked to and the text you quote both say cotex A8. so unless i have my arm cpus mixed up, its not a cortex A9…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
Thx TSO. Correcting….
um, could have picked a better pic than the red one. The white one is a lot more attractive but still not really a mature looking design.
I’m told the keys and dpad will be reworked before the final design.
I’ll still pick one up myself.
There aren’t a lot of Cortex-A8 based processors around but hopefully they will give ARM based MIDs the performance it needs to compete with current x86 based products.
Unfortunately the biggest problem with ARM-based MIDs is the software.
IE on WM6 is truly dreadful and Windows Media Player has very poor CODEC support.
OS2007 and OS2008 on the Nokia tablets at least have a better browser but still has a clunky (made-for-geek) interface and a poor media player.
When will these companies learn that you must ship a device that is ready to use out of the box and not have to tack on extra software like Opera, TCPMP, MPlayer or Canola.
Apple seems to understand. Unfortunately Microsoft or Nokia don’t!
hmm, quick brainstorm about browser controls on said device.
one analog stick to control scrolling, the other to control a on screen pointer to select elements in the page.