By There aren’t a ton of outstanding, action packed games on Android Market yet but all-in-good time. Part of that is probably because none of the mobiles out there are really geared exclusively toward gaming. But that will change – take the recently announced ODROID Entertainment Device by HardKernel.
Although the ODROID looks like it was designed by an Autistic kid, with the 3 D-Pads randomly placed around the screen, it’s an interesting concept and we’ll give it a fair chance. The device can play games using the touchscreen or hardware buttons/D-Pad in either horizontal or vertical settings (with that many D-Pads it had better!). It offers 720p quality video capture/playback both of which are at 30 frames per second, and the ODROID also features an HDMI Out connection. The company already has a full spec list so eat your heart out:
The specs don’t blow us away but they are certainly solid and really any gaming/entertainment centric device running Android would make us happy. The processor is a 600 MHz Samsung S5PC100 ARM Cortex A8 which i4u notes is the exact same processor used by the iPod Touch.
simular button layout as the wonder swan.
Will it run Crysis?
I think it needs a bigger screen. Also needs a better button layout. Actually a complete redesign would be smart. The specs look great!
The button layout almost makes sense but it seems like they screwed up the photoshop. Flip this phone 90 degrees clockwise into portrait mode as the screenshot would indicate and the speaker is at the bottom of the phone and the mic on the top. I think what they’re trying to do with the botton layout ia give you a standard 4 game buttons (directional and action) for each thumb both in landscape and portrait. Meh…I like the concept but it sure needs some polish.
Hmm, not SO bad. I’d like to see how snappy the interface is with that much RAM and that kind of processor.
What the heck is going on btw? Is it suddenly “let’s all pour out anything Android”-day? DSTL1, now this, what the heck.
Also, no phone on this ? C’mon people, it’s called convergence, not gameboy conversion ! Android is the “I always have it with me” device, not a me-too game platform wanna-be with zero chance of toppling the people who have led this genre for years (GameBoy DS, PSP, etc.).
Give it a phone, and give it a chance …
Oh yeah, other than that, I love the device ! :-)
Design is little bit ugly.
But it seems to be designed by engineer..
Very efficient layout of keys for landscape mode as well as portrait mode..
I love it !
I need an Android device without phone feature.
Um, not to rain on the parade, but does anyone else remember an ill fated, horrible device called the N*Gage? I foresee this going that same route, and then there is a huge nasty skid mark on the Android name down the line because of it…
Just a thought.
So what exactly do you mean when you say it “looks like it was designed by an Autistic kid”? I’m confused.
This will really make the emulator apps much more useful and fun to play!
Now, if only this phone/gaming device had a physical keyboard, too…and a redesign.
lol u insulted autistic people. [ insert angry comment here ]
The N*Gage failed because it sucked as a phone, and wasn’t much better as a handheld videogame. Personally, I’d be thrilled if someone made a phone with more or less the formfactor of a Sidekick, but with modern cpu/memory/radio specs and running Android. The problem is that the industry has a fetish with button-free slablike phones at the moment, and there’s a mindset that a phone has to be either completely dysfunctional for gaming purposes (so they can target ‘business’ users), or be so completely dedicated to gaming that it’s nearly useless for anything else. Would it really kill companies like HTC to make a phone that’s more or less a normal, high-end PDA phone that just happens to have a reasonable D-pad as the earpiece? A device that’s not necessarily DEDICATED to gaming… but isn’t completely dysfunctional for that purpose, either? A polite nod & acknowledgment that lots of GenX’ers would love to have a phone capable of playing decent games, as long as having that capability doesn’t require sacrificing everything else to get it?