Unlike say the PSP or DS this is an opensource device,
As long as device runs what the user wants (be it homebrew, commercial software or whatever) most users probably don't care much. But indeed being open device was the biggest reason I even considered GP2X myself. With GP2X I wouldn't have to worry about not installing firmware updates. On PSP I just, well, don't install them, it's that simple :-)
In the end I chose PSP instead of GP2X for the following reasons:
1)Both can run homebrew nicely (that was the most important feature), GP2X maybe a bit better
2)While GP2X is open, PSP was also "opened by third party developers" rather nicely. Another plus for GP2X
3)PSP has bigger resolution screen (but rather nasty "motion blur"). Tie? GP2X has smaller resolution, but probably less "motion blur"?
4)PSP has 3D acceleration (I'm really into OpenGL programming). A BIG plus for PSP.
5)The most important issue: Price (OK, GP2X was cheaper back then, but I could get PSP with part-time payment... Otherwise I would have had to wait for quite long before buying). I guess this is a plus for GP2X, even if I ended up buying PSP instead becouse of this ;-)
When getting PSP I was prepared to buy maybe few initial commercial game releases (Mercury rules) as Sony was already making newer games "require" newer firmwares. But that's something they totally messed up. It's currently possible to run >95% of commercial games without upgrading for real, thus keeping all homebrew functionality. That was a REALLY nice extra I wasn't counting on at all :-)
About built-in speakers in GP2X:
I think I read on some forums that while GP2X has 2 built-in speakers, they work in mono-only. Note that this is just "something I read somewhere", might be a problem that was only in the first production run devices. Better confirm this from people who actually own the device. I don't consider this to be a Big Bad Thing as the speakers are quite close to each other anyway, and you can get stereo from audio out connector (headphones...)
Thinking about GP2X, a forthcoming product (
GXP by some of the people that created the original GP32) looks very nice. Had it been available at the time I was making my decision, I might have ended up buying it instead :-)
Note that afaik it still isn't released, so if you want GP2X, might be better buying it now.
Oh, and while GP2X is open device, the company behind it doesn't have too good history of complying with the GPL licence (some sources still haven't been released afaik)
