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Pandora open-source handheld gaming console finally ships

The lid is off

Pandora open-source handheld gaming console finally ships
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Almost two years ago, in September 2008, Pocket Gamer ran an interview with the headline, Opening the box: The story of the Pandora (so far). It was about the open-source handheld Pandora console, and in it distributer Craig Rothwell claimed that units would be shipping before Christmas.

Yeah - Christmas 2010 more like.

After a truly epic delay, punctuated by videos of the device running Dreamcast, PlayStation, and SNES, and various false suggestions that the device would be available soon, first units have finally shipped.

Rothwell has been updating his Twitter feed with photos of the Pandora in production over the last few days (shown below), and his last two posts read:

“Big box of Pandori for shipping tomorrow. Over 100 in the wild now. Appstore has downloads/tweets activated.”

And then.

“Very likely that a lot of people are about to open Pandoras box. I hope none were killed in transport, forums should be interesting today!”

Which would imply that the first 100 have shipped and are due to arrive on doorstops imminently.

The Pandora packs a 600MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware, analogue and digital gaming controls, and a host of other features. It's basically a little Linux OS computer made for portable gaming and with an app store.

We'll be reviewing the Pandora soon.

"Some of today's work, going for 100 tomorrow." "They're duplicating!" "Today's attempt!" "Oh just one more then for all the people who still don't believe it's real!"
Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.