The Pandora is a handheld gaming console designed to take advantage of existing open source software to be a target for homebrew development. It is developed by OpenPandora

Let me get one thing straight before I begin – the Pandora is NOT for everyone. Not even close. It is a specialized, niche product designed for a few certain groups. However, if you are among any of these groups – hardcore retro emulation fan, Linux-tinkerer or pocket PC lover, you will absolutely adore what the Pandora has to offer.

The Hardware

The Pandora can be compared to an overweight Nintendo DSi – it flips open to reveal its screen and keyboard, with plenty of buttons and such along the front and back of the main part of the body. Compared to an iProduct, it’s quite a relief to see all your basics here – mini USB port, full USB port, On-The-Go port, power switch, headphone jack, volume control, and two SD card slots (which provide the Pandora’s storage – more on that later).

The Pandora opens up like a DS as well, and you may be a little shocked by what you see when you open it the first time: yes, a laptop-style QWERTY keyboard, numbers, directional pad, analog nubs, X/Y/A/B buttons, and Start/Select/Pandora buttons. This thing is crammed with buttons. Ninety-five percent of the keys include a second function as well in order to include every key you could want on a keyboard. There are even shoulder buttons on the left and right sides of the base.

The screen itself is an 800×480 resistive touchscreen, just as found on a DS. You take the (included) stylus and tap at the screen, like the early days of touch. You can use your finger as well, but it’s not as accurate as one would like (for reasons that will be explained later).

Overall, the Pandora is very well built. The black matte case isn’t as shiny as the PSP or 3DS, but at least it doesn’t pick up fingerprints just by waving your hand at it. The Pandora can take a few bangs and bruises but don’t rely on that. It’s quite heavy due to its huge battery, but we’ll touch on that in a moment.

The keyboard itself takes a LITTLE time to get used to. The Pandora was small enough for me to curl my hands around it, and use my thumbs to type comfortably. The somewhat strange layout of the keyboard will be putty in your hands soon enough.

The touchscreen is more of a software predicament on how well it’s used, but the screen itself, when used with a finger, feels a little flimsy – like a slightly loose sheet of plastic is over the top of the screen. There isn’t a problem with using a stylus though.

The physical controls included along with the Pandora (the d-pad, buttons, etc.) are incredibly comfortable but are a little stiff out of the box – a bit of pushing and they’ll loosen up easily. The nubs are quite easy to use as well– more comfortable than the PlayStation Portable’s attempt. However, whenever you boot the Pandora, it may require you to play with the nubs for a little while in order for them to be configured. Unfortunately, this can’t be changed, but it’s a good way to stretch your thumbs by doing a little nub configuration dance.

Basic Usage

Know this: to use your Pandora efficiently, you will need two SD cards, and they will need to be big. For the purpose of this review, I have two 16GB SD cards, both are being used in my Pandora right now, and both have less than 250MB of free space. Sure, I had to do a couple of extra tests, but I do recommend rocking two cards. You’ll need at least one card to run any applications beyond the bare minimum though.

Pandora does not run like a typical PC in the normal sense of downloading and installing apps; the Pandora OS has its own form of packaging apps known as PNDs. PNDs are basically one-file zipped ARM-based (x86/64 is the desktop PC “architecture”, ARM is mobile based) Linux applications with specific details embedded in an XML file (which give the app a name, version, etc.). When placed in the right folder on your SD card, the Pandora will auto-detect and add them to the interface. While some hardcore Linux users may not like this approach, for low end-users it’s deceptively simple to begin with.

With the Pandora, you have two choices for your interface – a full-blown, Linux-based desktop environment (known as XFCE to you geeks out there) or a trimmed, easy to use interface called Minimenu. I’ll cover both interfaces below, starting with Minimenu.

Minimenu

Minimenu is the default menu that comes with the Pandora. All of the apps installed on your SD card(s) are auto detected when Minimenu is run, and are listed by category (with an “All apps” page for good measure). Everything is organized nicely in its interface, and the theme isn’t bad either (but the theme is customizable, so take your pick on that).

Instructions are laid out clearly on screen on what buttons to push and what not to touch. Minimenu can also be used almost entirely with the touchscreen. You can have custom categories, and rename apps and categories as well, which makes the Minimenu interface easier to organize to your whims.

However, Minimenu does have a few disadvantages. With the simplicity of Minimenu you also lose one of the biggest features of the device – multitasking. It’s impossible to run more than one app in Minimenu at a time, which means no background music while you have Mario going on an emulator, or you cannot write a document for an office meeting while using Photoshop to edit a picture.

Desktop environment (XFCE)

The only way to get the main grunt out of the Pandora is by using the XFCE desktop environment. It’s a lightweight desktop like Windows or Linux, which is fully customizable – you can have your own wallpapers, all your apps will be collated in the start menu – it’s literally and honestly a full desktop PC.

You may wonder what the D-Pad and A/B/X/Y buttons and nubs have to do while in the XFCE environment. Simple – the D-Pad moves the arrow keys, the left nub moves the mouse, moving the right nub left or right will click (!) and the A/B/X/Y buttons do Home/End/Page Up/Page Down respectively. Once you get the hang of this system, it’s remarkably easy to navigate the desktop without using the touchscreen at all!

While you gain the ability to multitask in the XFCE environment (which is very important for a pocket PC), you do lose the ability to EASILY rename and re-order your applications. You can still do it by making a specific text file in a specific location, (which I won’t go over here).

Alternatively, you can just switch back to Minimenu. You can switch between the desktop environment and Minimenu at the same time.

I would like to take the opportunity to point out a feature here that can only be accessed from the desktop environment – you can take a mini-USB to USB cable and charge your Pandora with it, or you can select a menu option in XFCE and use one of the two SD cards as a giant flash drive. It’s remarkably funny to do so.

Knicks and Knacks

Before we get down to the available software part of things, here are some general questions and answers about parts of the Pandora I haven’t covered yet.

Operating system: The Pandora runs a customized version of the Linux operating system, so there is always the chance this or that may not work properly without suggestions or help from somebody friendly. Be prepared to ask questions.

Speakers: They are remarkably good for playing music or hearing sound in a game, and you always have the headphone jack for that sort of thing too.

Bluetooth: Unfortunately, I never had the chance to test using Bluetooth, but I’m told that it’s possible to get PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii controllers working natively on the Pandora with the right software and the right amount of time.

USB port: The USB port on the back of the Pandora can only run USB 2.0 devices normally – for USB 1.1 devices you’ll need to put a hub between the Pandora and the device first. However, plugging in a USB drive which contains movies or a good, newer model keyboard/mouse will generally work right off the bat.

Microphone: Yes, the Pandora actually comes with a microphone. For some reason I couldn’t get it to work in the Pandora’s port of Audacity. This might be something for you to try.

Overclocking other operating systems: Yes, with a bit of work, you can get Debian or Arch Linux running on your Pandora (albeit with less features and functionality compared to the Pandora OS). Hardcore Linux geeks will be happy with that. For Windows users – no, no, no, you will never see Windows running on this machine, ever.

Power: The Pandora has the ability to go into a “power-saving” mode where its CPU runs at barely 125MHz, great for resuming apps on the go. However, the Pandora’s battery life is doubled while in this mode, meaning if you want to leave it overnight in that state, it probably isn’t going to happen. If you need to turn it off for longer than an hour, just shut it down via Minimenu or XFCE, it saves your battery. In addition, if you close your lid or wait a few minutes, the screen will power off automatically – good for using as an MP3 player.

Battery life: Ten hours. The Pandora, on low brightness and Wi-Fi / Bluetooth turned off, can last roughly ten hours. That is nearly quadruple the 3DS and triple the PSP’s battery life. In low-power mode you get a few more hours, and powered off you get several months (kind of obvious).

The Software – Apps and Games

The Pandora has three different websites over the internet dedicated to hosting games and programs for it. There are several hundred apps available for Pandora as you read this, with that number slowly growing.

Applications

Some of the highlights in the application department include:

· Bluefish Editor: Webpage developer.

· GIMP: Photoshop alternative.

· Inkscape: Vector image editor.

· Rockbox: Effectively turns your Pandora into a giant MP3 player.

· VLC: Multi-codec player (just do not expect it to play high-definition video).

· Chromium, Firefox, Midori, Lightweight: The Pandora has intense browser wars. What side will you choose?

· Pidgin: MSN, AIM, ICQ, take your pick.

· Transmission: Torrent client.

· XChat: IRC!

· Abiword: Document editing.

· Gnumeric: Spreadsheet editing.

There are plenty of applications to go around for the users. Moreover, if you don’t like the fact that a specific app is not available on Pandora, you can port it yourself if they offer an ARM version (or you simply have a lot of time and skill on your hands).

Games

The Pandora has hundreds of available games, both original and ported from other systems. Some of the highlights include:

· Ports of several popular desktop games, including Abuse, Doom, Theme Hospital…

· Ports of free and open source games – LinCity, FreeCol, FreeCiv, Wormux, XMoto…

· Many games you’re unlikely to find anywhere else – Super Geometry Dust (a combination of Super Stardust and Geometry Wars), Thruster (a creative get-as-high-as-you-can game where you take out obstacles with your ship’s smoke), Wars: Commando (a war-based platformer)…

The list goes on and on; this barely scratches the surface. I have well over 200 games currently on my Pandora, and the number just keeps climbing higher.

The Software – Emulation

Finally, we arrive at what the Pandora was designed for–emulation. Below is a list of the platforms I managed to emulate, to what success, and my individual opinion on said emulation.

Let it be known that I have had problems with emulation that others have not seemed to – so therefore, your mileage may vary extremely.

In alphabetical order:

Overall

The Pandora is a beast of a machine. If you’re in the target line for a pre-N64 emulator portable console, a Linux-tweakers heaven, or just a mini, fits-in-your-pocket PC to walk around with, and with the time to spare to get it working the way you want to, the OpenPandora cannot serve you wrong.

Final Score: 5/5

EDIT: BlueMaxima here, and I just want to point out a few silly mistakes I made in the review that went un-noticed by myself. Sorry!

First of all, emulation. PSX emulation didn’t work for me because I didn’t have the right plugin selected. Figured this out long after I submitted the review for editing. D’oh.

Battery life. I’m told by EvilDragon that my Pandora has some sort of malfunction on the PCB which causes it to use more power than usual. I believe this also causes N64 emulation to fail. I haven’t gotten around to sending it back. D’oh again.

And also, a few of the statements I make are wrong – it’s not four men in Britain, it’s (as quoted by WizardStan) one guy in Britain, one in Germany, one in Turkey, and one in Canada. And the Pandora uses 125mhz of power in standby mode.