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Prototypes and concept devices
Project ODIN cancelled
Unfortunately, since making this page Motorola and Psion have decided to abandon their plans to co-develop and market wireless devices and as a result consumers are unlikely to ever see these products in the shops. Motorola are still due to release a Symbian device in 2002 and Psion will continue to develop PDA's with Bluetooth and DAB technology however it seems that for the foreseeable future, there will be no Psion Wireless Information Devices. This is a great shame but it's an understandable decision as Psion wouldn't have had it easy expanding into the well established mobile phone markets on their own anyway and of course Motorola are having to make cutbacks across the board with reduced manufacture and product streamlining planned. (Ericsson have now outsourced manufacture, Motorola have also outsourced and stopped production in their Scottish plant for a few weeks to clear stocks and Nokia seem set to outsource at least 20% of their products too)
Two devices from project Odin:
The following is a ROUGH translation of this WAPland article
Psion are planning to release a real killer and WAPland have images of it
WAPland have access to images that prove Psion has plans to release a full blown PDA incorporating a GPRS handset, thus we get a mobile phone that can surf through HTML pages three times as fast as we can with a bonded ISDN connection at home.
Of course it has a touchscreen but Psion aren't alone in launching touchscreen Wireless devices, most mobile manufactures will, but the prototypes we've seen of the competitors models all look like rounder versions of today's PDA's.
If Psion can last the distance we will get Email, HTML, WAP, fax, Word processing, Spreadsheet, Agenda, PC-synchronisng and much more all in one simple phone.
Everyone who's used a Psion PDA with it's Symbian EPOC platform knows they have something good to look forward to.
As far as we can see there is only one downside: 16 shade grey screen.
16 greys are ok but of course we want colour screens, and we know Psion can make them!
In the Odin project, Psion and Motorola made a quarter-VGA (240×320) colour EPOC-Quartz phonepad, with a touchscreen but no manual keyboard.
Psion hasn't released details of it's schedule but we can expect to see the EPOC crystal based phone (With keyboard) launched sometime before autumn 2001- Which gives us time to save a few quid!
Psion@CeBIT.2000
Of course these devices aren't new. They were first shown publicly as non-working prototypes at the Cebit 2000 exhibition in Hanover, Germany last February and have popped up at other events since. On the whole the devices shown in these photo's remain largely unchanged with the most notable physical difference being the ancillary screen on the Crystal device having moved from the edge to the centre of the case and the addition of two buttons either side of it to make or end calls. There's also a navigation control above the screen and an opening for the mic below. The device is voice activated though it doesn't have speech recognition. Whether it will feature a touchscreen as claimed in the WAPland article remains to be seen however as ER6 crystal doesn't support this just yet and although it's planned for later on the phone will be out before then. The Quartzpad will be released carrying both the Psion and Motorola brands, but marketed by Psion throughout Europe and by Motorolla in the US as "Accompli 003". Both will be fitted with a customised version of the ARM9 running at 150Mhz. This chip was designed by Psion themselves who based it on the ARM9 core, optimising it for EPOC similar to the way they designed the ARM 7110 for the Series 5. Psion may eventually use a 200Mhz version in their Crystal devices.
The Odin device will ship with 32MB high speed RAM for running programs as well as a 16MB internal disk, USB connector, Bluetooth transceiver and can be expanded with Multimedia cards rather than CF cards. As the front of the phonepad slides down rather than flips a nice (and familiar) touch by Psion may be a leather bound case like the Series 7, which would roll round as the fascia slides open. Both companies' devices will use ER6 Quartz (version 6.1, bringing better Bluetooth, WAP 1.2 and GPRS support to EPOC) which has various multimedia capabilities. In addition it will also feature the Opera Web browser V4.1 for a complete Web experience! You can read more about Quartz on the Symbian Website.
Milan Tjioe was at Cebit 2000 and managed to take some impressive photograph's of both these models and some other prototype devices, some of which are now in the shops! These can be viewed at the Psion User Group UMC website.
Also, you can see a photo of an ODIN prototype in the palm of a user's hand for an idea of scale on Portal PDA.
Sanyo Quartzpad
Not only are Nokia planning to release a new colour EPOC Crystal Communicator in the new year (possibly in February?) replacing the ageing 9110 series, but EPOCcity have reported on the latest news about Sanyo's EPOC devices. The colour Quartz PDA (Lyra) should be on sale in Japan in 2002 and will hopefully make it to Europe and the USA too! Weighing just 194g and including a headphone socket, Multimedia Card slot and wireless connectivity, this Unicode device should be the perfect companion to a GPRS or UMTS phone. The Pearl devices may appear later in 2002. They have Bluetooth and USB and are the first fully working ER6 devices to be shown so far with mostly mock ups, and the odd incomplete device being seen previously (The silver Ericsson was working but not with this final release of Quartz). These articles are in japanese but have some great photo's.
The Register
currently have an article about the Lyra quartzpad which has some more information but no photo's, so visit both!!
Find out more at the
EPOCcity website!
Nokia 9210 and 9290 Crystal communicators
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