Psion Series 3

Summary

In September 1991 the official presentation of the very successful Psion Series 3 with about 1.5 million sales took place. The software is thought out and running stable, the hardware is robust, but a vulnerability is the folding mechanism that protects the screen and keyboard. With battery, a Psion runs between 20 and 35 hours.

After the first series 3 follow Psion Series 3a (1993), Psion Series 3c (1996) and Psion Series 3mx (1998). At 3a, the resolution of 240 x 80 pixels has grown to twice (480 × 160 pixels) and the clock rate of the NEC V30H processor has also doubled to 7.68 MHz. A microphone for voice recording has been added. The purchase price is 199 UK pounds (in Germany 600 DM) for the model with 128 KiB RAM and 249 UK pounds (700 DM) for 256 KiB RAM. That’s a lot, but the organizer is very successful.

Psion is an acronym for “Potter Scientific Instruments Or Nothing” and David Potter is the founder. Initially, the British company develops software for home computers, such as Psion Chess or the spreadsheet Abacus, but in the 1990s, Psion was one of the leading manufacturers of organizers and has also invented this equipment class.

The 16-bit devices are called SIBO (Sixteen Bit Organizer) and the EPOC operating system — later became Symbian OS. The software offer includes approximately 1,500 applications.