Originally Posted by hkppl /img/forum/go_quote.gif
For such small device without touch screen and/or hardware shortcut keys (play/stop/forward/backward etc) will just mean non-usable as portable DAP....
It does have a touch screen, also many other controls, such as:
It's definitely usable as a portable DAP; I use it as such.
case closed:
two shoulder buttons - prev / next track
input lock - prevents accidentally changing the track
suspend - stops the music
analog volume knob
case open:
touch screen - for whatever
D-pad - could do prev / next and seek within a track
keyboard - find a track by typing part of it's name
It's not optimised as a portable music player, but I find it's very good (not ideal) for the purpose. The main down-point as an audio player, is that it's quite large for a pocket device.
Given that most of the time I'm enjoying the music, not fiddling about changing tracks, and that audio quality is very good, it works very well.
One advantage with an open device, there are very many good audio and video player apps available, so it could play any audio or video format, and do many other such as video cropping, audio equalisers, filters and effects, you can even compose your own music on it, record music, code your own alarm clock, it has TV-out, etc.
Honestly, I would not buy Pandora if I only wanted an audio player, and nothing else that it can do. But given that I am interested in other things such as gaming, programming, using internet, reading e-books, editing documents and spread-sheets, etc., it's a great little pocket computer. I don't think you will many laptops or computers with better audio than this little pocket device.
So, we fanboys were just kindly letting you know about this
pocket computer that also happens to have great audio; much better than a Mac Book, iPod, iPhone; and comparable to just about any high-end portable player. None of us has a commercial interest in the Open Pandora company, we're just keen (yes, maybe too keen!).
