Well hello...
Very interesting. I loved my Series 5, and this looks great (both aesthetically and feature set). Looking forward to the hands on, and also an idea on price.
The Psion returns! Meet Gemini, the 21st century pocket computer
The original Psion designers have returned to put the classic British pocket computer in a modern body. Martin Riddiford, the designer of the Psion Series 3 and Series 5 keyboards, and co-founder of Therefore, has come up with an entirely new design for the 21st Century. Patents were filed today, and the venture codenamed “ …
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Monday 27th February 2017 14:37 GMT Down not across
Re: Well hello...
Well well. Rather interesting. Ticks all the boxes. Except EPOC and stylus.
Even with 8Ah battery I have doubts about the standby time with Android. I guess if you slimmed down all the extras (as most vendors bundle in tons of bloatware (often a full suite of apps competing with Google) it might be possible. Standby clearly mean display-off, as 5.7" QHD screen is likely to be thirsty.
As for pricing. Backer prices on indiegogo look very tempting.
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Monday 27th February 2017 18:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 21st century pocket computer
I call it a smart phone.
Got one of those. It's missing a major feature: a proper keyboard.
Guess what this has?
- Hmm. My phone can link to the Bluetooth keyboard I keep in my bag. The other 95% of the time it fits comfortably in my pocket for ease of use.
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Monday 27th February 2017 14:00 GMT Loyal Commenter
"The pocket computer had a multitasking rich operating system and application suite, but was best known for making touch typing possible on a relatively low cost and convenient device"
They seem to have done away with the idea of touch-typing on this one, as those pictures seem to be missing the little raised bits on the home keys.
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Monday 27th February 2017 16:21 GMT Dave 15
multitasking rich operating system
That will be a reference to Epoc32, later called Symbian.
The one ditched by everyone on the back of a piece of linux based crud from an American company, oh well.
So no it won't manage the battery life nor the security, and it doesn't have the very amazing slide out keyboard that balanced the weight of the screen tilting backwards and making the whole thing a stunning piece of engineering.
Of course, I will still buy one IF it is made in the UK, is it?
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Monday 27th February 2017 14:05 GMT mr_souter_Working
hope this isn't more vapourware......
or an early april fool - or some weird joke from El Reg.
if this is real, and not too expensive, i could see me getting one
one of the things i really like about my Psion 5mx (still in use), is the Serial adapter, to let me interface with switches and the like. maybe this will at least work with a USB-Serial dongle.
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Monday 27th February 2017 15:50 GMT Lusty
Re: hope this isn't more vapourware......
+1, don't mess with us here Reg or we'll burn your office down! We've been waiting for a new Psion for decades :)
That said, the month of actual usage time on two AA batteries and proper fold out keyboard were really what I liked, along with the ability to use almost no memory to do what Windows does but faster. Put Linux on it, even Android and most of that is lost.
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Monday 27th February 2017 14:05 GMT Oh Homer
I still have my Psion netBook
As in the original netBook, before the advent of generic "netbooks".
Still works too, although it's hideously dated.
Rarer than hen's teeth, apparently.
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Monday 27th February 2017 15:48 GMT MrT
Re: I still have my Psion netBook
Nice - IIRC there was a choice of leather cover, though lots got shipped with black or dark blue. I was looking at either a Series 7 or netBook Pro after happily using an original Series 5 for a few years. In the end, falling laptop prices and a donated US-spec 5mx kept me happy. Laptops come and go, but I've still got both S5s in the attic.
I used to travel on the train a lot, and remember writing some of my editorials for CastleCops on the original S5, then hooking up my Motorola T250 handset over IR to email them off to be published. The OPL language was easy to use too.
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Monday 27th February 2017 18:08 GMT Oh Homer
Re: wonder how much it's worth
Dunno about other models, but the second hand market for netBooks is basically zero AFAICT, or at least nobody's selling. The most recent listing I found was from last September, and the guy only wanted £100, so it hardly seems worth selling.
Maybe in another 20 years...
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Monday 27th February 2017 15:23 GMT Peter X
Re: OS
If it could run something Debian based, e.g. like Raspbian is, then that would... absolutely perfect actually. This _could_ be a seriously brilliant device!
I guess the problem is that an OS like Android is easier to sell to most consumers.
Would it be viable for them to ship with Android, but provide a community supported Debian based distro? As long as it looks like they're (Planet/Gemini/whatever-they're-called) committed to the linux distro and can provide drivers/documentation, then I'd be happy with that.
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Monday 27th February 2017 16:04 GMT Infernoz
Re: OS
Interesting, but cost, build and usability will be critical.
The quantity and quality of software for a OS is critical, Android and Linux with decent repos. provide loads; more people can't or don't want to write any or most of their software, even developers want enough provided environment for their project scope.
Not enough quality software for an OS makes that it of limited use and niche or dead.
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Monday 27th February 2017 15:57 GMT Lusty
Re: OS
"doing an OS is *hard*."
For normal people, maybe. Psion created more than one great OS with spectacular popularity as well as some of the most usable productivity apps I've ever seen and their own object oriented language (when that sort of thing was a big deal). If these are the same guys they are perfectly capable of not only making a better OS than Android but also of making that the global standard smartphone OS within a decade. I'd buy one as I'm desperate to get away from control freak money machine Apple and not go to data slurping privacy killer Google. Blackberry and Windows Mobile aren't real options so an OS move from these chaps would be a great move. Especially since their old mobile OS went on to be the leading mobile OS through Nokia for a looong time.
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Tuesday 28th February 2017 12:08 GMT Daggerchild
Re: OS
"Psion created more than one great OS with spectacular popularity ..."
and was it pentested? The requirements for 'good' have changed - It needs multitasking, media, USB, usb-hardware drivers, all of which pile on the pressure. The Psion OS was more akin to DOS. I loved it, but it won't fly these days, no matter how many people think it will.
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Wednesday 1st March 2017 13:56 GMT Lusty
Re: OS
Epoch 32 had support for those things. At the time, no it probably wasn't pentested due to lack of an Internet but I suspect the billion or so Nokia phones which later ran it allowed security to be tested pretty thoroughly. Did you even try to look up which OS Psion created? It was more advanced than DOS by a long way, and probably better designed and more modern than Windows at the time too. Epoch32 (Symbian) only died because Apple came along and later Android. Being tied to Nokia probably killed it more than anything.
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Monday 27th February 2017 14:52 GMT Ogi
Re: predantry
For full pendant points, Linux is "GNU/Linux", and Android is "Android/Linux", "GNU" and "Android" are the userlands, and "Linux" is the kernel.
Linux was originally called "GNU/Linux", but as there never was a real big alternative to "GNU" for the userland, people just called the whole stack "Linux" (much to RMS'es annoyance at the time).
However now with Android out there, it is getting a bit confusing, as both are "Linux", but with different, incompatible userlands. Hence to distinguish between the two, the prefixes can be used (I've started doing that when you have to clarify "which Linux" you are referring to).
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Tuesday 28th February 2017 10:55 GMT Ogi
Re: predantry
> I don't call it "GNU/Linux" because only 10% of the software on a typical Linux box originated with GNU
Well, generally in the context of operating systems, the "userland" is all the software that you need to build a bare usable OS. That does not include "end user applications" which can be anything, even proprietary. Doesn't change the userland, which is primarily the work of the FSF's "GNU project".
I am sure <20% of the apps on my phone originate with Android as well, but we still call the userland "Android" because of all the libraries, systems, services and utilities on top of Linux which make the OS what it is.
Even if we accept your premise that all software and applications running on Linux is the "userland", most of that software still uses the GNU GPL, making it "GNU" software in that sense (or at least GNU related). GNU is not a company with a trademark, it is more of a philosophy around software development and licensing.
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Monday 27th February 2017 23:46 GMT Oh Homer
Love Linux, hate Android
Linux (the kernel) is an amazing piece of engineering. Android, on the other hand, is a hideously convoluted mess.
An OS that can only be "flashed", not merely updated incrementally? Obfuscated EFS data that's strewn all over multiple filesystems, and impossible to fully locate and backup (resulting in bricked devices when you don't)? Filesystems that can't be mounted as mass storage, but are only accessible via weird protocols like MTP? Nasty hacks needed to move apps from one storage device to another, and even then only partially, where not all apps are even "compatible" with being moved at all (and "paid apps" that apparently can't be installed as system apps)? Modem drivers with a hard dependency on specific builds of the bootloader (WTF?!?!)? A phone that takes three times longer to boot than a fully-loaded PC? The list goes on.
Not that other mobile OSes are any better, they're all junk yards of non-standard contraptions stuck together with duct tape, designed solely for the purpose of inhibiting the user's freedom and herding them into the vendor's walled garden.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
