FirstEdition Changes
What is the First Edition?
The First Edition were the first gp2x units delivered to the customers. They have "First Edition" printed on the top left.
Apart from that, they had some minor hardware flaws which had been changed with the "Normal Edition" (I'll call it that in this article).
The changes are:
1. The FE (First Edition) has a clear Battery/Power-LED cover (you can see the LEDs), whereas the NE (Normal Edition) has a milky cover.
2. The FE has some pads on top of the MagicEye-Chip, which keeps the LCD in place. This also led to some Plasma Effects when pressing the Stick Button on some units, that's why the NE doesn't have the pads anymore but has the LCD glued to the case. You can safely remove the pads in the FE if you have the Plasma Effect - the LCD won't fall off anywhere.
3. The headphone port is better soldered in the NE.
4. The USB / DC Rubber cover on the FE has two parts sticking out. One should go into the DC port, the other one into the USB port. As this never worked very well, GPH simply sliced off the DC one at the NE. (You can do the same, if that annoys you on your FE).
5. The FE has a resistor on the board which can cause flickering on some units (a 654). It has been replaced on the NE with a 614.
6. The speakers in the NE have a cloth cover before them, not in the FE. Additionally, the NE have longer speaker wires and the wires glued to the speakers (I guess GPH got pissed off when they opened up hundreds of FE to fix the resistors and had the speaker wires come off very often when opening up the case).
7. The battery contacts of the FE have some weird coating on them. The NE don't have that anymore.
8. The stick cap of the NE has been a bit cut off at the bottom, to prevent contact of the stick cap with the case (which often lead to unresponsive joysticks). You can simply do the same with your FE stick if it has a problem recognizing a direction.
9. The First Edition has "First Edition" printed on it (D'oh! :
source: http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/FirstEditionChanges