Pandora Handheld Assembled, Pictures Released

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The Pandora handheld, which came about sometime before 2007, is being developed with the goal of incorporating open-source concepts and suggestions from various internet forum members, leading to an open-source homebrew sort of handheld. After a few years of development, the Pandora team gotten a prototype of the device finished, and gave a demonstration of the device.

The Pandora team dubs the device as the ‘most powerful gaming handheld’ and it’s hard to argue with that when you look at the specs: 600MHz CPU, 256MB DDR3 RAM and PowerVR-powered graphics processing. These specs put the Pandora handheld at a place considerably more powerful than the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

However, if you watch the video, the Pandora seems more than just a gaming platform as it is running a conventional desktop Linux OS and seems to be more of a UMPC than a gaming handheld. No gaming was shown in the tech demo, and for good reason – the handheld will primarily run homebrew games and emulated games from consoles older than the Sega Dreamcast (so, 2000 and earlier), and we all remember what kind of trouble Nokia got into when they showed an emulator running on their phone.

The Pandora is still likely a considerable amount of time away from it’s release, as this was just a tech demo of an early manufacturing prototype. No information on pricing or a release date was available.

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