Shockingly new, yet shockingly old
Published by Steve Litchfield at 15:47 UTC, November 14th 2008
Steve Litchfield muses on how far we've gone backwards in many ways, in the last 15 years...
Read through a review of a current S60 smartphone (e.g. the Nokia N85, the Apple iPhone, the Blackberry Storm) and you're led to believe that, though imperfect, the device is the pinnacle of modern technology.
Yet I've just been playing with something startlingly more advanced. Here's the spec sheet:
- Huge, wide (480 pixels), 5.3", high contrast screen that works even better in sunlight than indoors.
- A lightning fast OS, a variant of Symbian OS, with menus and screens that appear instantly - no operation takes any noticeable time at all. Very impressive.
- It's a robust, clamshell design, with full width, terrific Qwerty keyboard, including a number row. And almost every function in the device has a keyboard shortcut/accelerator.
- Twin disk expansion slots.
- Full Office suite, including a power spreadsheet app that allows the insertion of charts and full manipulation.
- Flat file generic database that can be turned to any task, a real killer application.
- Powered by removable, instant replaceable, ultra cheap power cells
Quite a list, isn't it? And you can have it today.
Mind you, it's not currently sold in the UK, you'll have to rely on eBay. But you shouldn't have to pay more than £10 ($15) to buy it outright, so it's well worth dipping into your pocket for.
What on earth am I talking about?
Why, the Psion 3a, of course, launched in 1993, over fifteen years ago. An ETERNITY in the smartphone/PDA world.
How is it that the bullet points above sound so attractive still? I bet you couldn't take many other areas of technology and pick a 15 year old product that knocks spots off the current products in as many ways.
Let's work through the list again...
- 5.3" screen. Well, we're getting there. The Nokia E90's display is close, as is the HTC Touch HD, and ditto the iPhone and Nokia 5800. But 5.3" AND great sunlight performance? The catch, of course, is that the 3a had a monochrome screen, whereas we all love and need colour these days.... apparently. But still.... 5.3".... Wow.
- OS speed. To be honest, each version of Symbian OS seems to be of roughly similar speed and none of them come near to that of the also-fully-multi-tasking Psion. One reason modern devices are so relatively slow is that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. Four or more times as many OS threads, integration of 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth communications, they all need attending to and this slows things down. But I argue that things should either be better optimised or a faster processor put in - having to wait three seconds while an iPhone application launches itself, or two seconds while S60 Messaging deigns to render a simple email, or five seconds while S60 Gallery brings up preview image of the last photo taken, or six seconds while the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 manages to change its home screen panel, is just not acceptable.
- From Psion Series 5 (the pinnacle of mobile keyboard technology) to Nokia 9210 to Nokia 9500 to Nokia E90, the clamshell qwerty keyboard has been gradually decreasing in usability. That on the HTC Touch Pro is about the best of the current crop, but even it is nowhere near the level of the Psion 5. Why are keyboards continually designed to be fiddly, tiny-key-travel affairs for those with small fingers?
- Key shortcuts? The built-in applications on the Nokia E90, for example, have almost no shortcuts whatsoever. What's the point in a Ctrl key when you don't use many Ctrl accelerators? I can count the number implemented on the E90 on the fingers of one hand. With the E71 getting very popular and with the E63 now upon us, let's hope Nokia and others start to give higher priority to designing applications for phones with qwerty keyboards.
- Twin expansion slots are perhaps less of a must these days. With capacity in a single microSD now getting to 32GB, there really is no need. But occasionally it's handy to be able to load up multiple disks, perhaps even of different types (e.g. microSD and M2)? Still, I won't cry any tears over only having one flash disk slot.
- Full Office suite, with chart creation in the spreadsheet module? This in fact was the single aspect which kicked off this tongue-in-cheek piece. Previewing Quickoffice 6, I was struck that, although very slick in many ways (e.g. zoomable and almost WYSYIWG) and although it could cope with modern Office 2007 XML file formats, you still couldn't even edit charts in its spreadsheet module, let alone create them. 15 years of progress suddenly didn't seem so much like progress after all.
I've ranted before on how one of Psion's crown jewels was its office suite - it's way too late now, of course, for anyone to do anything about the original code, but speaking as a mobile professional, I've been missing Psion Sheet since the late 1990s - I ran my life on those spreadsheets.... sob. - Psion Data was, of course, hugely popular and I never, ever understood why it was dropped by Nokia for their conversion of the Psion 5's software for the 9210 Communicator. To this day, I get half a dozen people a month emailing me wondering whether there's a modern equivalent to help them move from a failing Psion to an S60 or Windows Mobile or Apple phone. I usually plump for HanDBase, if only because it's truly cross platform and you don't burn any bridges by going for it - it'll run on anything. But it's not Data. It's not anywhere near as easy to use.
- Do I really want to go back to the days of AA batteries? Not really. Strike one for the modern age here. Though I suspect that most phone owners simply won't believe the low power consumption of the old Psions - I used to get a month of use from 2 AAs in my old Psion Series 3mx - and I was a power user. Less demanding owners would report a battery life of over two months. In the modern phone's defense, it's more ecological and economical - and the modern battery also has to power 3G and GSM radios, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, colour screen and so on. Somehow I don't think anyone would have stood changing the AAAs in their phone every other day.....
Was there a point to this piece? Yes.
Am I advocating everybody going off and buying up old Psion Series 3as on eBay? No, obviously not.
But that doesn't mean we (and I'm using the term 'we' in the global sense, to include the designers at Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, etc. - even the whiter-then-white Apple) can't learn an awful lot from some rather clever early 1990s technology...
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 16 Nov 2008
Categories: Comment, Hardware
Platforms: General
Feature Discussion
Tzer2
Yeah, I was just thinking something similar actually about computers. My 1980s ZX Spectrum would boot up instantly, literally switch it on and the main menu appears. My Windows-powered PC on the other hand takes several minutes to load up (even when the desktop appears it spends ages getting everything ready with the hard disk clunking away incessantly). I'm not exaggerating either, it's literally minutes before it's settled down and willing to actually open an app properly.
Why does it take SO long to get a computer ready now? I know they've got more to get ready, but they've also got far more speed and memory too. And the longer you own the computer the longer it takes each time you switch it on...
Why does it take SO long to get a computer ready now? I know they've got more to get ready, but they've also got far more speed and memory too. And the longer you own the computer the longer it takes each time you switch it on...
Chrissybear
Good article, Steve, and yes I get the point!
Strangely I have been having a rush of nostalgia myself and recently got a 1MB 3a from eBay so this piece is interesting in its timing.
I cannot believe Nokia et al have not capitalised on the HUGE demand (it was there for Psion, and I don't think it has gone away!) for a QUALITY keyboard, QUALITY size screen and built in FAST office apps that just "do the job".
The Psion (3 or 5) was a true office replacement computer and could stand alone or be used with with a PC/Mac. I am amazed still at the number of people still using them!
IMHO, too many phones today compromise on both the computer/PDA side and the Phone side...
...one reason I still stick with the 9500/9300 series and will continue to do until some enterprising manufacturer sees the error their ways and "does a Psion"!
Strangely I have been having a rush of nostalgia myself and recently got a 1MB 3a from eBay so this piece is interesting in its timing.
I cannot believe Nokia et al have not capitalised on the HUGE demand (it was there for Psion, and I don't think it has gone away!) for a QUALITY keyboard, QUALITY size screen and built in FAST office apps that just "do the job".
The Psion (3 or 5) was a true office replacement computer and could stand alone or be used with with a PC/Mac. I am amazed still at the number of people still using them!
IMHO, too many phones today compromise on both the computer/PDA side and the Phone side...
...one reason I still stick with the 9500/9300 series and will continue to do until some enterprising manufacturer sees the error their ways and "does a Psion"!
Unregistered
Steve, you are definitely not the only one to wonder what happened to Psion's crown jewels. If some people are even going to the trouble of porting Palm software to S60, for example, why doesn't somebody let us have the functionality on S60 that was available on EPOC[Symbian] 15 years ago?
ajck
Good article Steve, and worth considering - hopefully Nokia people are reading this to keep their minds set on some of the right priorities. However I think it'd be fair for them to come back with the question, "well what exactly do you want for that performance?".
We're talking about (processor) power/performance/cost ratio here, basically. Compared to a modern Symbian phone, the 3a is doing very little comparatively. The OS will be leagues less sophisticated and capable than current Symbian, is not driving a true colour display, all the different radio interfaces, hardware etc. that current Symbian phones have.
That said, I think it's probably inevitable that Symbian has got architectural bloat that just wouldn't be there if you rebuilt it from scratch. I bet Android would be far nippier on the same hardware than Symbian for example. The drawback of that of course is that you wouldn't have the software compatibility or stability.
> My Windows-powered PC on the other hand takes several minutes to load up
Tzer2: As someone who's designed and written all sorts of software on mutliple OSes over the last 25 years, I can tell you this is just Microsoft's appallingly bad software engineering, pure and simple. This is not bias, and it's a shame the general public and journalists don't realise just how incredibly poor Microsoft's engineering is. Their success is pure marketing, and illegal and immoral tactics. Some Linux distributions can fully boot in single digit seconds, on the same hardware as a multi-minute Windows boot. And yet end up giving you the same functionality. If only people could see through the Microsoft halo and aura, they would see them for what they are - a giant parasite :)
We're talking about (processor) power/performance/cost ratio here, basically. Compared to a modern Symbian phone, the 3a is doing very little comparatively. The OS will be leagues less sophisticated and capable than current Symbian, is not driving a true colour display, all the different radio interfaces, hardware etc. that current Symbian phones have.
That said, I think it's probably inevitable that Symbian has got architectural bloat that just wouldn't be there if you rebuilt it from scratch. I bet Android would be far nippier on the same hardware than Symbian for example. The drawback of that of course is that you wouldn't have the software compatibility or stability.
> My Windows-powered PC on the other hand takes several minutes to load up
Tzer2: As someone who's designed and written all sorts of software on mutliple OSes over the last 25 years, I can tell you this is just Microsoft's appallingly bad software engineering, pure and simple. This is not bias, and it's a shame the general public and journalists don't realise just how incredibly poor Microsoft's engineering is. Their success is pure marketing, and illegal and immoral tactics. Some Linux distributions can fully boot in single digit seconds, on the same hardware as a multi-minute Windows boot. And yet end up giving you the same functionality. If only people could see through the Microsoft halo and aura, they would see them for what they are - a giant parasite :)
Tzer2
Has anyone got a clear explanation for why Psion pulled out of the business in the first place? Did they run out of money or something?
Unregistered
If I remember right it was a multitude of different factors all hitting at once:
Psion goldcard modem sales were slowing due to more and more machines coming with internal ones pre fitted.
The PDA market share was getting squeezed by windows mobile and palm PDAs which were seen as more innovative and fashionable, and so when it was time to respond with a successor to the venerable series 5....
They came out with the series 7, that managed the mean feat of being too big to be viable as a PDA and too non standard to be considered as an option to a true sub notebook. I dread to think how bad the sales figures were for it as I've never seen one in the flesh (Nor have I seen Teklogic's followup Netbook).
Seb
Psion goldcard modem sales were slowing due to more and more machines coming with internal ones pre fitted.
The PDA market share was getting squeezed by windows mobile and palm PDAs which were seen as more innovative and fashionable, and so when it was time to respond with a successor to the venerable series 5....
They came out with the series 7, that managed the mean feat of being too big to be viable as a PDA and too non standard to be considered as an option to a true sub notebook. I dread to think how bad the sales figures were for it as I've never seen one in the flesh (Nor have I seen Teklogic's followup Netbook).
Seb
karen-s
I still miss the keyboard on my Philips Velo.
svdwal
It looks like modern smartphones are too much of a phone and not enough of a computer to be useful to the mobile information worker. Hence the immense popularity of the modern crop of netbooks.
You can now even buy them heavily discounted with a flat rate data tariff. Quite amazing, because the Communicator used to be in that very same niche a few years ago.
You can now even buy them heavily discounted with a flat rate data tariff. Quite amazing, because the Communicator used to be in that very same niche a few years ago.
Unregistered
I do miss my old Psion as well. Especially that I could have multiple Agenda files.
neilhoskins
I agree entirely, Steve. Well done for breaking the taboo and coming out and saying it. IMO the rot set in when they separated the OS from the UI. There's nothing wrong with Symbian, it's S60 that's stagnated for years.
Super Chimp
Bit bemused about the speed put forward for the X1 in the article, most of the RL feedback for the X1 I have read indicates it is fairly fast. Are these speeds taken from a pre-production X1?
ares
Yeah Steve, you completely lost the plot with that X1 comment...the 6 seconds stuff you mention if probably from a video from a pre-production unit that got very popular...
If you see the tones of videos of retail units now available, you´ll see its much, much, faster now
If you see the tones of videos of retail units now available, you´ll see its much, much, faster now
slitchfield
@ares and Super chimp:
Yes, fair enough, I'd been trying pre-production firmware on the X1... I was only making a general point about modern OS being slow sometimes - I'm sure there are some areas where the production X1 is still grindingly slow - EVERY OS has some of these log-jams.....
Yes, fair enough, I'd been trying pre-production firmware on the X1... I was only making a general point about modern OS being slow sometimes - I'm sure there are some areas where the production X1 is still grindingly slow - EVERY OS has some of these log-jams.....
Unregistered
SonyEricsson Experia X1 is slow? Of course it is, it runs Windows Mobile. No more explanation needed.
It's like people saying the hardware of the Google/Android/T-Mobile G1 is crap. Of course it is, HTC made it.
In other news, the pope is Catholic.
It's like people saying the hardware of the Google/Android/T-Mobile G1 is crap. Of course it is, HTC made it.
In other news, the pope is Catholic.
morpheus2702
An interesting article but we really are at the periphery of what’s an interesting comparison piece and what’s really just a bit delusional, rose-tinted nostalgia. Steve, your love of all things Psion and E90-like is a matter of public record. But let’s look at the points you raise:
The screen. Easiest thing in the world to have a big screen – all the early Pocket PC phones had a 3.5” screen. People felt like an idiot using it as a phone, hence the success of the 2.8” screen variety. Now we are back to big screens after the iPhone made them sexy and socially acceptable. As for monochrome screens... come on!
OS speed – a fair point in isolation but just not one that stacks up. You want instant launch times, then the way I see it you have 3 options: Ramp up the RAM and the processor (and impact battery life). You make the OS really light like Palm, then realise that it doesn’t have enough power to handle what consumers are doing now with all this fancy multimedia, 3G malarkey. 3rd possibility – do some tricks with the OS so that apps are prioritised, as is rumoured with the Windows 7 and what netbook manufacturers are doing.
Keyboards. What are the best selling mobile QWERTY devices on the planet right now? Blackberries I’d guess. Why? Convenience. Convenience is the biggest consumer trend so far) of the 21st Century. If you are a road warrior and want to really hammer the keyboard – get a laptop with a 3G card. If you want something in-between, then you’ll compromise on some element, inevitably the keyboard. It’s a matter of choice and if people really wanted an outstanding keyboard on a mobile device, don’t you think some manufacturer would be making it?
Office Suite. This is one thing that I am constantly amazed at, the emphasis placed on the ability of a Smartphone/connected device/whatever to be able to view and edit Office documents. I am probably seriously off the pulse here; I know that Quick Office suites are amongst the best software sellers. However in 10 years of using mobile devices capable of editing/viewing spreadsheets, I’ve maybe used that utility a handful of times. Why? Spreadsheets of any complexity are a complete pain to view, never mind work on, on anything with a small screen. Much faster to get to a laptop and work on it there rather than try and do it on your mobile device, scroll, edit, scroll again, squint... I don’t think it’s a lack of progress; it’s a lack of convenience and therefore, demand.
The screen. Easiest thing in the world to have a big screen – all the early Pocket PC phones had a 3.5” screen. People felt like an idiot using it as a phone, hence the success of the 2.8” screen variety. Now we are back to big screens after the iPhone made them sexy and socially acceptable. As for monochrome screens... come on!
OS speed – a fair point in isolation but just not one that stacks up. You want instant launch times, then the way I see it you have 3 options: Ramp up the RAM and the processor (and impact battery life). You make the OS really light like Palm, then realise that it doesn’t have enough power to handle what consumers are doing now with all this fancy multimedia, 3G malarkey. 3rd possibility – do some tricks with the OS so that apps are prioritised, as is rumoured with the Windows 7 and what netbook manufacturers are doing.
Keyboards. What are the best selling mobile QWERTY devices on the planet right now? Blackberries I’d guess. Why? Convenience. Convenience is the biggest consumer trend so far) of the 21st Century. If you are a road warrior and want to really hammer the keyboard – get a laptop with a 3G card. If you want something in-between, then you’ll compromise on some element, inevitably the keyboard. It’s a matter of choice and if people really wanted an outstanding keyboard on a mobile device, don’t you think some manufacturer would be making it?
Office Suite. This is one thing that I am constantly amazed at, the emphasis placed on the ability of a Smartphone/connected device/whatever to be able to view and edit Office documents. I am probably seriously off the pulse here; I know that Quick Office suites are amongst the best software sellers. However in 10 years of using mobile devices capable of editing/viewing spreadsheets, I’ve maybe used that utility a handful of times. Why? Spreadsheets of any complexity are a complete pain to view, never mind work on, on anything with a small screen. Much faster to get to a laptop and work on it there rather than try and do it on your mobile device, scroll, edit, scroll again, squint... I don’t think it’s a lack of progress; it’s a lack of convenience and therefore, demand.
slitchfield
@morpheus: All good points. Bear in mind I was trying for something slightly whimsical and provocative..... 8-)
ares
Steve, yes, its reportedely still slow in some stuff, like any other Windows Mobile device, despite the powerfull processor.
Unregistered
The beauty of the Psion screen could be coming back with OLED battery life, although it won't be up to the daylight viewing on Psions which was better than with backlight.
Demand for Psion products was huge I remember having great difficulty getting hold of one at one time. They were definitely filling a gap but such quality cannot be made cheap and these days people want cheap.
As for the Psion 7, now devices that can be considered similar are becoming hugely popular. Psion were years ahead but the Psion 7 (as I mentioned) was massively expensive). Having said that, if there were 3G networks around then and the 7 was enabled for them then Psion would have cleaned up.
The answer to the slow OS problems is two have two processors, one to handle the gui and another to talk asynchronously to the phone functions and the gui.
Demand for Psion products was huge I remember having great difficulty getting hold of one at one time. They were definitely filling a gap but such quality cannot be made cheap and these days people want cheap.
As for the Psion 7, now devices that can be considered similar are becoming hugely popular. Psion were years ahead but the Psion 7 (as I mentioned) was massively expensive). Having said that, if there were 3G networks around then and the 7 was enabled for them then Psion would have cleaned up.
The answer to the slow OS problems is two have two processors, one to handle the gui and another to talk asynchronously to the phone functions and the gui.
buster
I felt so strongly that Psion should get some credit for the recent boom in "netbooks" (as well as having first come up with the name) that I sent an email to the BBC's technology program, Click (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ox/default.stm):
Quote:
|
I must admit that I find the use of the name "netbook" for the range of new, cheapish, low-power laptops slightly ironic, as I have been using the original netbook for several years. By this, I mean the Psion netbook. This is a laptop having a superb keyboard, a VGA colour screen, no moving parts, wi-fi capability via a PCMCIA adapter etc. It weighs less than 1kg and runs for up to eight hours on a single charge; not bad for something that's now eight or nine years old. Of course, it is horribly outdated in some respects - no built-in wi-fi, no bluetooth, no USB, dodgy screen cable etc. But as a package, it was unrivalled until the EEE PC came along. I have felt for a long time that a more powerful version of the Psion netbook would be more than adequate for many users' need, a fact which is borne out by the sales figures for these new "netbooks". Perhaps you would be so good as to give Psion some of the credit for having pioneered the use of low-power laptops, as well as having originally come up with the name "netbook" to describe such devices. Ian Chapple, The Hague, The Netherlands |
Ben_Kri
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ajck
> My Windows-powered PC on the other hand takes several minutes to load up Tzer2: As someone who's designed and written all sorts of software on mutliple OSes over the last 25 years, I can tell you this is just Microsoft's appallingly bad software engineering, pure and simple. This is not bias, and it's a shame the general public and journalists don't realise just how incredibly poor Microsoft's engineering is. Their success is pure marketing, and illegal and immoral tactics. Some Linux distributions can fully boot in single digit seconds, on the same hardware as a multi-minute Windows boot. And yet end up giving you the same functionality. If only people could see through the Microsoft halo and aura, they would see them for what they are - a giant parasite :) |
Super Chimp
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ares
Steve, yes, its reportedely still slow in some stuff, like any other Windows Mobile device, despite the powerfull processor.
|
All the RL stuff I have read says it obtains an acceptable speed & isn't greatly behind other top rank TS devices.
ianfogg42
Older gear often feels faster in use as the slower hardware is matched with less ambitious software.
The concept is what I call subjective speed. Wrote about it recently on my new site, but am unable to put the link in here as not posted 10 times here yet :-(
The concept is what I call subjective speed. Wrote about it recently on my new site, but am unable to put the link in here as not posted 10 times here yet :-(
Unregistered
Of course, the Psion 3a was too bulky to fit in a pocket, heavy, and the screen didn't have a backlight. It was a nice, but ultimately flawed device -- too big for a PDA, too small for a netbook -- and that's why Palm ultimately killed Psion's offerings. (This was in the good old days, of course, when Palm still had half a brain.)
You want a Psion now? Maybe try an EeePC or similar. They're more comparable in size and function than today's mobile phones.
You want a Psion now? Maybe try an EeePC or similar. They're more comparable in size and function than today's mobile phones.
Unregistered
I am a Psion user for more than 10 years now and worked for a company building GSM-phones. So let me rant a while:
When we introduced our phones to the (German) net providers in order to let them sell them with their contracts, they told us 3 criteria: low power consumption, cheap, and: a new model every 2 years.
IMHO the last issue is the point: Psion devices were designed kind of "from scratch", with hardware, OS and software being optimized and as close to a perfect fit as possible.
This is impossible to acheive every 2 years, so nowadays we have beta-ports of "current" OS and software-suites to the latest hardware. The developers simply did not have the time to optimize OS and software for the new gadgets that were invented the last 10 years. They even do not always have the time to test carefully. This results in loading times of several seconds, missing keyboard shortcuts, upgrades, reboots, comparably high power consumption,...
Some 3rd party software solutions also have to be "rapid ports" of their predecessors.
The only thing we can do about this si asking us, if we really need the newest hardware and e.g. multimedia? We have to live with those drawbacks then. The rest of us may use their old systems to good effect, even if they are more 15 years old. BTW: I am more than 3 times that age ;-)
Martin
When we introduced our phones to the (German) net providers in order to let them sell them with their contracts, they told us 3 criteria: low power consumption, cheap, and: a new model every 2 years.
IMHO the last issue is the point: Psion devices were designed kind of "from scratch", with hardware, OS and software being optimized and as close to a perfect fit as possible.
This is impossible to acheive every 2 years, so nowadays we have beta-ports of "current" OS and software-suites to the latest hardware. The developers simply did not have the time to optimize OS and software for the new gadgets that were invented the last 10 years. They even do not always have the time to test carefully. This results in loading times of several seconds, missing keyboard shortcuts, upgrades, reboots, comparably high power consumption,...
Some 3rd party software solutions also have to be "rapid ports" of their predecessors.
The only thing we can do about this si asking us, if we really need the newest hardware and e.g. multimedia? We have to live with those drawbacks then. The rest of us may use their old systems to good effect, even if they are more 15 years old. BTW: I am more than 3 times that age ;-)
Martin
DKlaus
A bit off-topic, but...
After getting my N95-1 back from repair (including a firmware upgrade), loading the latest gallery image takes about 13 seconds! It was significantly faster before the repair/upgrade. Has anyone else experienced this?
After getting my N95-1 back from repair (including a firmware upgrade), loading the latest gallery image takes about 13 seconds! It was significantly faster before the repair/upgrade. Has anyone else experienced this?