What's a Caanoo?

Well, a canoe is a type of boat that... Wait, what? A Caanoo? Ohhhhh, okay. Well, the Caanoo is a new open-source handheld that was created by the company Game Park Holdings.

Picture taken from TheTechJournal.com

The Caanoo is a quite powerful handheld, and has a few new features over the previous handheld by the company, the GP2X Wiz, with the console coming in two different colors - White or Black and Blue. Here are the specs of the Caanoo according to Wikipedia:

• SoC (System on a Chip): MagicEyes Pollux VR3520F
• CPU: ARM926EJ 533 MHz embedded on SoC (architecture version ARMv5TEJ)
• GPU: 3D hardware engine embedded on SoC (OpenGL ES 1.1 support)
• 3D performance: 133M Texel/s and 1,33M Polygon/s
• main RAM: 128 Mbytes DDR SDRAM 133 MHz (peak memory bandwidth: 533 Mbytes/s)
• video buffer: about 16 Mbytes of main RAM are reserved for the video/texture informations
• Operating System: GNU/Linux based
• Flash memory: None (128 Mbytes reserved to the OS)
• Connection to PC: USB 2.0 High Speed through EXT Port
• USB Host: USB 1.1 standard socket
• Supports SD / SDHC memory cards (up to 32 Gbytes)
• G-Sensor/Vibration Motor
• High precision analog stick
• Display: 3.5 inch LCD 320×240 pixel (resistive touchscreen)
• Embedded Microphone and stereo Loudspeakers
• Power: Internal 1850mAh Lithium Polymer Battery (approx. 5/6 hours game/video playback)
• Dimensions : 146 (w) × 70 (h) × 18.5 (d) mm
• Weight : 136g
• WiFi via adapter (USB dongle – will be included in a special bundle)

So the real question is...

What exactly is an open-source handheld?

An open-source handheld is unlike normal handhelds (the DS or PSP) in that an open-source handheld is easy to develop for and download games and apps to install. In the Caanoo's case, there is a complete archive of games and apps available for download for free on OpenHandhelds.org. In fact, developing for the Caanoo can be as easy as developing for your computer and then recompiling the program for the Caanoo's hardware, which makes it a very easy system to develop for. This is an exceptional experience, as most times, it is impossible to make applications or games for handheld devices as they are usually closed for most all developers. The ease of development for the Caanoo makes it a good system to begin development on for newer developers. So, this will be one of the focuses of tutorials here on Game Up!

• SoC (System on a Chip): MagicEyes Pollux VR3520F
• CPU: ARM926EJ 533 MHz embedded on SoC (architecture version ARMv5TEJ)
• GPU: 3D hardware engine embedded on SoC (OpenGL ES 1.1 support)
• 3D performance: 133M Texel/s and 1,33M Polygon/s
• main RAM: 128 Mbytes DDR SDRAM 133 MHz (peak memory bandwidth: 533 Mbytes/s)
• video buffer: about 16 Mbytes of main RAM are reserved for the video/texture informations
• Operating System: GNU/Linux based
• Flash memory: None (128 Mbytes reserved to the OS)
• Connection to PC: USB 2.0 High Speed through EXT Port
• USB Host: USB 1.1 standard socket
• Supports SD / SDHC memory cards (up to 32 Gbytes)
• G-Sensor/Vibration Motor
• High precision analog stick
• Display: 3.5 inch LCD 320×240 pixel (resistive touchscreen)
• Embedded Microphone and stereo Loudspeakers
• Power: Internal 1850mAh Lithium Polymer Battery (approx. 5/6 hours game/video playback)
• Dimensions : 146 (w) × 70 (h) × 18.5 (d) mm
• Weight : 136g
• WiFi via adapter (USB dongle – will be included in a special bundle)
• Colors: Black/Blue, White