Production Timeline

The Pandora Production Timeline

2008+

Date	Note
(yyyy/mm/dd)	Milestone with short description and link to reference if possible.
2008/09/30	3000 units were made available for pre-order, resulting in server overload and crashes.
2008/09/	Within first few days pre-order extended to 4000 units. The first mention of this (that I have found so far) is in a post by Chip.
2008/10/	Craig's bank account frozen. Later on, refunds start to be sent out [1]
2008/10/30	Amount of ram increased to 256MB (from 128MB), NAND increased to 512MB (from 256MB). [2]
2009/01	Re-paying for pre-orders begins [3]
2009	Renders of the case shown off [4]
2009	Pre-ordering re-opened to fill places freed up after the great banking event. Only cash/bank transfer payments were accepted, no credit payments.
2009	Prototype caseworks received.
2009	Populated PCBs shown off.

2010+

Date	Note
(yyyy/mm/dd)	Milestone with short description and link to reference if possible.
2010/05/21	First shipments start[5]. Helpers on the production line seem to have been paid in pandora, first one here[6]. By June 25th, the parts which arrived in the first shipment were exhausted, with approximately 400 shipped to GBAX customers, and 200 to EvilDragon's customers in mainland Europe. These shipments went to people who pre-ordered in the first 1.5 hours (roughly). Some 50 odd units shipped with only one fully working nub (to pre-orderers who choose to take one in order to skip the queue). Of these, 5 were left over that nobody had chosen to take and auctioned on eBay by Craig for £279.99. There were an additional 7 units with both nubs not fully functional[7]. These were offered at £150.00 on the boards and seem all to have sold at that price. The highest price on eBay for one of the first ~600 units was ~$1600???
2010/06/01	2nd Batch Pre-order emails start to be sent out. 2nd batch is priced[8] at £279.99/340 EUR (includes VAT) or $349. Ordering from the 2nd batch is offered as a way of getting a Pandora before Christmas, the shipment of the first 4000 predicted to complete around October 2010 with a continuous progression into the 2nd batch at this point.
2010/07	Production is stalled to help prevent building more units with faulty nubs. See the "Nubs" page for details.
2010/08/04	Another 100 from the first batch start to ship[9] Along with a few more one-nub units, these are the first units to ship since the nub tolerance problems were identified and the factory re-supplied with 100% tested nubs. (requiring some previously 'ready to ship' boards to be re-worked) This small shipment was used for approval before any more populated boards were shipped from the factory.
2010/08/13	Another 200 are in the process of being built[10][11]
2010/09/20	100 scheduled to ship[12], taking production past the 1000 mark. These are still using nubs from the 1st production run, tested to select good ones. New prototype nubs are still in final testing. Since 150 of these shipped out of sequence (with faults), this equates to roughly 600 in the GBAX queue, and an hour into pre-ordering.
2010/10/06	2000 cases arrive in the UK[13]. This allows first phase assembly to re-commence (displays in lids, etc). Still waiting for updated nubs to be prototyped and produced (although populated PCBs are waiting).
2011/01/05	First Pandora from a batch of 350 boards that shipped over Christmas has been delivered[14] These are the first boards produced after production was halted whilst the nubs were improved and re-designed. PCB production has continued with at least another 400 ready to be shipped from Texas.
2011/01/07	400-550 units shipped to customers this week.[15] By 11th Jan, delivered units had reached orders at 4:30 GMT on 30th Sep'08[16]
2011/01/27	Craig announces that premium Pandoras can be ordered for delivery within 7 days at a price of $500[17] This is to fund an immediate increase in the final assembly team and will be in parallel with the pre-order assembly which ought to be sped up (and the premium price units will be limited in quantity)
2011/07/19	Last known arrival of a circuit co Pandora in germany.[18]
2011/08/26	Pandora production is in the process of being moved to Germany. 1200 preorders remain to be shipped (800 from Craig's queue, 500 from EvilDragon's).[19]
2011/	placeholder - anything to mention? please contribute

2012+

Date	Note
(yyyy/mm/dd)	Milestone with short description and link to reference if possible.
2012/02/28	First Pandora scam site found.[20]
2012/03/	(?01-04?) Rebirth!
2012/03/06	First rebirth Pandora in germany posted for arrival at its owner[21]
2012/03/29	2nd day preorders completely sent to EDs customers? First 3rd day (2008/10/02) preorder received pandora.[22]
2012/05/07	First 6th day (2008/10/05) preorder received pandora.[23]
2012/06/12	First 2009 order seen received.[24]
2012/08/24	Approx. 75 remaining preorders in EDs batch 1 queue.[25]
2012/12/10	Approx. 34 remaining preorders in EDs batch 1 queue. 116 preorders (150-34) in batch 2 queue.[26]
2013/01/12	ED announced all batch 1 preorders of the gp2x.de shop are ready for delivery. Batch 2 preorder queue of the gp2x shop is less than 100. [27]
2013/05/11	ED revealed survey results about the remaining pre-orders of Craig. [28] With 500 units it is 400 Pandoras more than expected.[29]

Pandora > History

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On September 30, 2008, 3000 units were made available for pre-order. Later on, this number was increased to 4000. The release of the Pandora was delayed several times until May 2010, when mass production and shipping of the Pandora began. A Production Timeline page describes the process.

For the first batch, 4000 units were made available to be pre-ordered for $330 USD each. Currently units from this batch these are being assembled and shipped out to customers. A second batch of 4000 was made available for pre-order in July 2010. The price of the second batch was $349 USD. [30]

During fulfillment of the first batch, a limited but unspecified number of "Instant" Pandoras were made available at $500 and promised to be shipped in 7 days [31]. This has since become the only way of purchasing a Pandora, though the the 7-day Guarantee had applied. Instant was officially closed in August of 2011 as it was apparent Circuitco was not producing anymore boards.

EvilDragon announced in the same month that a new pre-order system has been setup while all resources are being transfer to Germany for production there. [32] The newer Pandoras will feature a greater RAM size and a more sturdy case.

[As of 2012-06-19 this information is badly out of date. It's shipping is now fairly consistent.]

• Note: With the new production line in Germany, 256MB RAM modules have become unavailable in the recent time frame. All new Pandoras being/have been produced contain now contain a 512MB RAM module.

• 256MB (Ciruitco model) or 512MB (Germany Model) DDR SDRAM in consumer units (early developer units had 128MB).

A detailed economic history of the project from August 2011 until December 2012 is contained in this post by Michael Mrozek (EvilDragon).

• The Official Development Update List - When one of the Pandora team members posts an update about the hardware, software, or manufacturing process, it is added to this list (note: last updated in Feb. 2009. Useful for historical reasons)