Dingoo A320 forum

In The Netherlands, a Dutch toy store advertised the MI2 portable console. Press release here.

It's features are somewhat similar to the Dingoo but has some extra features like camera, touchscreen and accelerometer. But it lacks the emulators (maybe because emulators might not be completely legal to sell here). It is available from 1 October and the price is less than 70 euros (around $100).

The (far from complete) specs for those who can't read Dutch:

• 32-bit processor
• 16GB (not clear if it is bytes or bits) flash memory for game, audio & video storage (512MB free)
• 3.5" TFT touch screen with stylus
• Build-in microphone
• Accelerometer (for games controllable by tilting the console like balancing games or marble games)
• Camera (0,3 mega pixels?) (for camera games) (photo's can be transferred to a PC)
• 1200 Mah rechargeable battery
• MiniSD expansion slot
• Video out (cable included)
  
• 100 pre-loaded games (including games that use the touchscreen/stylus, the accelerometer and camera) (some games in Dutch)
• New games downloadable from the internet (charges apply)
• MP3 audio player
• AVI/MP4 video player
• PhotoFrame photo viewer

Unfortunately, no information about the processor used, speed and internal RAM.
It would be a very interesting machine if you could create your own software for it or even run Linux on it.
Is this the new Dingoo killer then?

Robert

nothing 'bout opensource OS... hard to say if that's good

lol the site says it has 16 gig of space but the games on it take 15,5 gig of it. so you have 512 mb free for music LOL (exact 512 mb wtf?)
I did some research:
it has a vga camera 640x480(fail)
1200mah battery (dingoo got 1700)
Screen is bigger it has a motion sensor, but battery is smaller so battery will be dead in 2 hours?
they say it has a 32bits processor well that is a nice way to screw with the specs for people that have no idea what there talking about. (they are obvious leaving the clock speed out of the specs on purpose)
Prob, if there will be emulators they will be released apart from the handheld because it is stated that you can buy apps for 2 euro. This obvious locked out the opensource part.
This is defendly the handheld a kid gets from it parents when they want a ds but the parents don't want to pay that much money. (and all kids will laugh at the kid at school)
More info including distributer: http://www.business-nieuws.nl/2009/08/planet-interactive-komt-met-de-mi2-een-nieuwe-next-gen-handheld-gameconsole-met-100-ingebouwde-games/ (its in dutch)

At a first glance this looks like a great product. But not for hacking and/or true classic gaming, I think. At first I even thought that it was a rebranded Dingoo. The integrated webcam is a real gem! But I'm a little bit reserved about the video specs:

AVI Motion Jpeg files

That sounds a lot like those el cheapo MP4/MP3 players that are advertised to 'play video'. What the marketing people do not tell you is that you have to convert every video to some weird format using a special tool that is supplied on an accompanying cd-rom. But I may be wrong, and maybe this product is different. A while ago they had an other real gem on offer (I'm from Holland too). It cost only 15 Euro! It had about 50 kiddy games on it. I wanted to buy it for my nephew, but it was sold out after one day...

The whole thing reminds me of a kiddy photo camera my nephew has (the Kidizoom). He can take pictures with it and put them in picture frames (just like w/ the above mentioned MI2). He can also make little movies and play MP3's. It was the 'toy of the year 2007'. So somebody must have thought: "Hey, there's money to be earned w/ that sort of product". I do not think it is a serious alternative for the Dingoo. The games that are advertised are mostly for kids (educational games? I say: "We don't need no education!" [Pink Floyd, 'The Wall', 1979]). And extra games? Well, as said above: they cost 2 Euro each. And then the kids probably get some old SNES games that are gathering dust in the attic. Or they get one of those Java games from spele.nl. Hi hi.

Pros:

• Camera!
• Motion detection ("accelerometer"): wonder if that stays fun for longer than the dumb Wii motion thingy...
• Touchscreen!
• Mini SD expansion (> 2GB possible??)

Cons:

• Probably NO opensource, Linux, emulators etc.
• Meant for kids (educational games etc.)

If the above cons are true: then it is not worth the Euro 70 in my opinion.

It's pretty damn sexy. If it could run the Linux kernel, I'd buy one definately.

Chances of that are slim. Since they plan on selling games for 2 Euro per game I do not think they'll release the exact specs. Considering the price it my even be a SoC (system on chip). That is, everything is hardcoded into one single chip to save costs. Hence, no flashing of the firmware/bios. But if it is possible to run a (mips) linux kernel w/ webcam support, it will be a real gem!

The Dingoo CPU also a system on a chip (it says so in the datasheet). It has a CPU, IO, USB, audio and graphics on one chip. The other ICs are only RAM, FLASH and a LCD driver.

There is no mention of a USB port but I suppose there must be one if you are able to upload games from your PC to the device. I think the specs are too extensive to use a custom SoC. It is much more than a NES on a chip. So I think they used more or less an off the shelf SoC.
I suppose someone has to buy one and disassemble it to see what SoC is used.

Hmmmm. Indeed, this MI2 might just be some sort of Dingoo. Does anybody know how exactly it was possible to boot the Dingoo w/ Linux instead of its standard OS? Was that because the Dingoo's specifications were released by the nanufacturer? Or because an SDK (software development kit) is available for the Dingoo? I am having a hard time in hoping that this device will be as "hackable" as the Dingoo if the manufacturer does not co-operate in some way.... And I don't think they plan on that because the device is so cheap that they have to make some extra money w/ selling downloadable games for 2 Euro a piece.

For the Dingoo's CPU (Ingenic JZ47xx), the datasheet and tools are available from the chip manufacturers website (ftp://ftp.ingenic.cn/). The Dingoo has the possibility to boot from the build-in USB to unbrick the device in case the firmware got corrupted. The code to be booted from USB can be anything, not just a program to reflash the firmware. Then some reverse engineering of the native OS/firmware made it possible to adapt the boot process to make the Dingoo dual-boot.
With this you can do already a lot. But it probably helped that Dingoo released a dev kit for the native OS as well.

this looks more interesting, but I doubt it will be as cheap as our beloved dingoo
http://www.slashgear.com/odroid-android ... u-0154522/