Edge DS Review

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Created on Wednesday, 04 January 2012 21:37

Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 September 2013 02:40

Written by Lynx

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Edge DS Review




The fist thing I noticed was the packaging. Now, being that I sold DS products for a while, I began to notice the little things about packaging. One, making the packaging small enough to allow a lot of them to fit on a shelf is good. It's also very good to make the packaging big enough to protect the device inside from our friendly shipping carriers. But.. this packaging doesn't take either of those into thought. The idea behind it is neat, but is nothing more than that. And if there was an award for creative packaging, this would get it. But, on the down side, every single one sent out needs to have extra weight of a piece of cardboard to finish filling the box. Unless you ordered two of them, there will always be extra packing needed to protect the product. Again, neat idea.. just doesn't seem cost effective.

So, as with most of these devices (Slot-1 MicroSD adapters) it comes with the Edge card and a USB MicroSD reader/writer. Just for fun, I start by tossing it into the DS without a MicroSD card to see what I get. Hmm.. not what I expected. English would have been nice.. but maybe it's a setting that I haven't set yet, and since it apparently doesn't have any onboard firmware, I'll have to put something onto the MicroSD card just to be able to use the device. So, I go in search for a download.


I end up at the http://www.edge-ds.cn site in china and wait the few minutes for the download to complete. Open the .zip file and copy the entire contents onto my MicroSD card that has some homebrew already waiting. Some has already been DLDI patched, some has been patched for another device, and some hasn't been patched at all. I pop the MicroSD card into the slot and the first thing I notice is that the MicroSD card sticks out. Hmm.. Where have I seen this before? (CycloDS Evolution maybe?) I boot up the DS and select my language. Just for fun, I pull the MicroSD card back out to see if setting the language had any effect on the error message when there is no MicroSD card inserted.. Nope.. no effect. I think it would be nice to be able to tell me the error in the language that is set in the DS.. I don't think many english speaking people will know what "EDGE.DAT tidak menemukan!" means.

So, I boot it back up to OS version 1.33 and notice the interface looks very familiar.. Wait a second.. this looks just like the CycloDS Evolution.. Hmm.. two seconds on Google tells me the Edge is a copy of the CycloDS Evolution minus the onboard firmware that allows the CycloDS to boot without a card inserted.

I run it through the same list of homebrew to see it's compatibility.

AtoW = No problems
Colors.nds = No problems
DSLinux = No problems
DStroy.nds - No problems
lmp-ng.nds - No problems, played .mp3s fine
PocketPhysics - No problems, saved and loaded files fine
TetrisDS Official Demo - No problems
wifi_lib_test.nds - No problems
WordUp - No problems
Worldofsand-0.1.nds - No problems

As with the CycloDS, everything worked as expected. Now that I realize that DSOrganize is "designed" to become the media player for this and the CycloDS, it launched and ran fine from the media button on the main screen. Basically, it is the same device as the CycloDS and I'm not sure how important onboard firmware really is. It doesn't seem to be any slower for the most part and everything launches just as well. The only thing different is that you are required to have the EDGE.DAT file on the MicroSD card. And again, not being able to press left and right to jump down a screen at a time is bothersome, but I'm sure they will fix that in later versions of the "OS" if they haven't already.

Overall, not a bad card, and if you are looking to save money, I can't really see a benefit of purchasing the CycloDS over the Edge. It would have been nice to see smarter packaging, but you can't have everything, I guess.