Most UMPCs (ultra mobile personal computers) run on Windows Mobile or something similar. The Pandora, however, is different. It is powered by Linux (probably a modified Debian distribution, but not certain yet). The device is still in development but should be available soon. The following image is a rendering of what it will look like:
The device will be quite small, about half the size of the Asus EEE PC. It still has a 4.3″ 800×480 pixel display, wich is quite an impressive resolution for such a small screen. The hardware is also very decent, as the Pandora has been designed with gaming (among others) in mind. It features an ARM Cortex 600 Mhz CPU, a PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 3D chipset and 128 megabytes of RAM (in comparison, the PSP only has 32 megs!). It includes Wifi and Bluethooth support, a dual SD card slot, USB port and S-video output.
What really makes this device unique, however, are the gaming controls. It has a D-pad, dual analog sticks and gamepad buttons, the same controls you’d find on a gaming console! The Pandora doesn’t require games to be developed for it, though, since it’s intended for emulation. Lack of games has killed mobile gaming platforms such as the Gizmondo, but the Pandora only requires an emulator for a specific platform and you’ll be able to play all games of that platform on it.
This makes the Pandora especially interesting for people who like to play retro or indie games. The hardware doesn’t allow emulation of anything more recent than the Playstation, but even then there are thousands and thousands of games available. And since it’s open source, it’s a dream for developers! Libraries for OpenGL and SDL will be available, so it should be within the reach of hobbyist developers to develop games for it.
At the moment, the Pandora is still in development. A number of units has already been shipped to developers, but none are for sale yet. It should become available in July, and will cost about €210 or $330.
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