The handheld gaming market has received a lot of attention in the last years. Four years a go Nintendo was the absolute leader with no direct competitor until Sony launched their popular PSP. Although the most well-known name in the mobile gaming industry is the gameboy (Nintendo had a blast those days), the “new” (should be read as “latest”) arrivals (Nintendo DS and Sony PSP) are far more impressive devices.





Since 2004 when the PSP was launched, companies haven't made any big leaps in the market. Of course the PSP evolved in to the PSP Slim&Lite, and the DS in to the DS Lite (how's that for funny?), but these where merely updates to the existing series.



Now, at the end of 2008, a newcomer is ready to challenge the market by integrating the latest technologies alongside a considerable processing power. Pandora is an open source project with the goal to produce the most advanced portable gaming console on the market.



The Pandora uses an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, a TI C64X digital sound processor and a PowerVR SGX 530 3D graphic accelerator. All of these integrated in the Texas Instruments OMAP 3530 System-on-Chip. The console comes with 256MB of internal flash memory and 128MB DDR RAM. As the 256MB of flash memory will clearly not do, Pandora provides two (as in 2) SD memory card slots for storage expansion.



If you are thinking that even with the two memory slots filled with a couple of SDHC cards won't do you can put your mind at ease since Pandora designers included support for USB Mass Storage devices. The device runs a custom Linux distribution and SDKs are offered freely in order to make the console popular without the need of extensive marketing schemes.



Pandora comes with a 4,3” LCD (the same size as the PSP display) with a native resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. As the Nintendo DS, the display has touchscreen functionality.



Regarding game controls, the console provides two analog sticks, a directional pad, two top triggers and 4 main actions buttons. Since the device is actually a mobile computer it also come with an almost-full QWERTY keyboard.



The devices comes with native S-video and composite output, so if you have a TV set around you can plug it in and enjoy a big screen gaming experience. Engineers also designed the device for different signals for TV and console display.



Pandora's dimensions come at 140 x 83 x 27 mm and, as far as wireless capabilities go, the device comes with integrated Bluetooth 2.0 (+ EDR – enhanced data rate) and WiFi. Specifications show a 10 hour battery load under considerable load conditions and eight and a half hours for full load. Music addicts will be pleased to hear that the 4000mAH battery provides 100 hours of mp3 playback.



The console is sold for 330$.