Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Actually there was newsflash that the cpus should be able to run on 720 MHz instead of the declared 600. A cortex A8 is hardly outdated, it's mainstream (if you think it's outdated, a tegra is ancient history :) )

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Considering they originally announced it to be released in November 2007... then April 2008.. and so on and so on.. and now it's 2009... I'm still not instilled with confidence.

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

That is why he wrote 'sloooowly'. Cortex A8 has been available for a while now. If Pandora was released end 2008 it'd have been one of the first devices with that processor. If Pandora comes out in summer 2009 it may be one of the last because OMAP4 is on the rise.

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

True enough. But I'll be happy as long as the CPU and GPU are sufficient to play .FLVs from youtube and (at least) 640x480 videos at full frame and bitrates without skipping while I'm commuting. 720p would be awesome if it can do it, but the screen res means that it won't look better anyway. This is stuff my N800 can't do, and why I want the dual full-size SDHC slots.

The other linuxy stuff I want to do with it is not CPU bound, and games will of course be optimized to run on it.

(Really the N800 is almost there already - but it falls just short. Also I really miss the hard case from the 770 which the Pandora's clamshell makes up for - "Pocketable" is not merely size.)

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

In any case, upgrading to OMAP4 is far easier than making a whole new device - if there will ever be a followup device, which I doubt :( Also, if there will be a higher spec 35xxx, that would be trivial to pop in. BTW I expect the first OMAP4 devices to appear just before next xmas at best, so no rush there if they want to stick to TI...

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Maybe they will marry Intel ;) Ahem. Thing is, if you build a device and keep delaying the release the features it provides are becoming less and less interesting because of fierce competition and hardware development. Although not always; see popularity of N800.

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Don't tell Nokia that. If they find that the CPU in their not yet released crown jewel is outdated, they'll immediately stop working on its software and will concentrate solely on the next device.

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Wow. Someone is angry...

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

[deadpan] Yay. What a boost.

I didn't say it's outdated yet... I said it's sloooowly becoming outdated. At this rate, by the time it's finally released, there's likely going to be a much more interesting crop of similar small ARM architectures worth hacking about.

I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much everything you said, right down to the clamshell design.

That's precisely my point. Although I disagree about the N800--the only reason the N800 is still overwhelmingly the most popular is because it was such a well designed piece of hardware but it's showing its age and it makes me ache for something more capable, JUST outside of its current abilities: play unconverted video, have more memory resources and to do openGL and so on. I don't need an N900. I need an N800 with increased resources. It seems like the Pandora would fit that bill VERY, very nicely.

"Fixed in Harmatten" is the new "Fixed in Fremantle!" Cripes.

Who are you talking about?

Re: Mer on Pandora?
 

Yes, but Nokia N800 has some features no other device provides as of now. Some of which Pandora has too. Like 2 SD cards. That Nokia N800 becomes less relevant over time is logical, and that people who love the features would eventually love a device akin to it but with some better hardware (like OMAP3) is also logical. Yet, we don't see that. I agree Pandora fills very much the niche N800 did which N900 won't but Pandora lost some of its credibility, and its being delayed and delayed, slowly but surely making it less relevant because of alternatives.