History - Psion, EPOC

We continue our series of reviews presenting mobile operating systems, just as we have promised. After the first review I try to concentrate even more on the history part. Let’s begin, shall we?

Series 60, contrary to common belief, is not a strand-alone operating system, but a user interface for the system called Symbian OS, which has a history that goes back a long time. Its predecessor was EPOC, developed by Psion, a British company, and it’s rumored that the name stands for Electronic Piece of Cheese. British Psion has been established in 1980 and it had strong relations with Sinclair Research, which might be known mostly because of ZX Spectrum. In the beginning they were writing software for Spectrum and ZX81, which have appeared under the brand Sinclair. In 1983 they have been charged with developing an office software pack for the Sinclair QL computer. They made this successfully – they have had the bases for years –, and then they’ve released their first hardware in 1984, this has been the Psion Organiser, which is known as the first portable computer on Earth. It had an 8 bit Hitachi 6301 CPU, 4 KB of ROM and 2 KB RAM, while its display was a one-line, monochrome LCD. In 1986 the successor Organiser II arrived, that had more memory and pre-installed software. What’s more important from our point of view is its single-tasking operating system, for which even end-users could have developed software in OPL (Organiser Programming Language), which has been very similar to the then highly popular BASIC. The decline of the company’s machines has started in 1997, as Series 5 handsets had a hard time competing with cheaper Windows CE-based devices and the Palm Pilot.

Psion Organiser II

After this small detour, let’s get back to EPOC. The first version of the system, EPOC16, was in use at the end of the 80’s/the beginning of the 90’s in 16-bit SIBO machines. The 32 bit EPOC came in 1997, the new system was launched in the 5 series; the list of machines running EPOC32 includes Series 5mx, Revo and Reco plus. The system was written in C++, and it has been under development for years before its launch. It was a single user multitasking system, that ran on ARM processors, had a graphical user interface, called EIKON. As an interesting fact this environment was much more like the ones used on the PCs of the era, rather like the one on concurrent palmtops. EPOC has been first licensed from Psion by Geofox, but they have only manufactured 1000 devices based on it. Breakthrough came with Ericsson, who launched Psion Series 5mx under their own name (this became Ericsson MC218), and they have also releases an EPOC Release 5.1-based smartphone, the R380. It might sound unbelievable, but practically this is the ancestor of Symbian-based smartphones, or rather the first Symbian-based phone. Meanwhile Oregon Scientific has also launched an entry-level handheld computer based on EPOC, this has been Osaris, which had the specialty of being the only one that used Release 4.

Oregon Scientific Osaris, the only handhled computer to use EPOC Release 4

The change came in 1998, when Psion Computers, Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson established London-based Symbian Ltd, and at the same time Symbian Operation System has been born, which has been practically the 6th version of the EPOC system. In 1999 Matsushita (Panasonic) has joined the company, while in 2002 Siemens and Sony Ericsson have followed. Currently 47.9% of the company is owned by Nokia, Ericsson has 15.6%, Sony Ericsson 13.1%, Panasonic 10.5, Siemens AG 8.4, while Samsung owns 4.5%. It’s interesting that although BenQ has bought the mobile department of Siemens, the Symbian shares are still owned by them.

Ericsson R380, based on EPOC Release 5.1

Psion wasn’t closed down after the establishment of Symbian, but the rate of developments slew down. There has been two years of wait before the extended Series 5 has appeared; the color edition was ready in 2001. Meanwhile many of their projects became a failure, and those that have been launched were far from being successful – even though they were experimenting with lots of interesting stuff, like a voice recognition software for PDAs. The company sold their PDA factory in 1999, due to this they had to sack 250 employees from the total of 1200. Handheld computers were used only by very few people in the golden era of Psion, but in the 21st century more and more companies want a slice from this cake, and unfortunately the company couldn’t keep up with the pace. The final hit was the halting of the project they had in common with Motorola. This happened in 2001, when the American manufacturer withdrew from development, which had it costs about 11 million British pounds by then. Psion was looking for a while for a partner to continue the PDA-phone project, but this had no success. At the same time they have united their modem, computer and InfoMedia units under the name Psion Digital Solutions. After halting the production of PDAs, they had incredible losses, in 2003 Motorola, on of the founders of Symbian, sold its shares to Psion and Nokia, and a year later Psion has also stepped out from the business, selling its shares to the Finnish giant. The company currently has only one working division, Psion Teklogix.

History - Series 60

There are currently three systems based on Symbian OS: Series 60 from Nokia; UIQ, owned by UIQ Technology, and MOAP, that is used by NTT DoCoMo. Lately Series 80 has also been on this list, but the Finnish manufacturer has terminated this platform once and for all by building its E90 communicator on Series 60 foundations.

The first Series 60 smartphone was Nokia 7650, announced in 2001 November 19. The first model from the manufacturer to have a built-in camera was of large size, but its features made up for this. Its CPU was a 104 MHz ARM9, it had 16 MB ROM and 4 MB RAM, there was 3.6 MB free to use from the latter one. Its display had a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels and was capable of displaying 4096 colors. Although it has been advanced in terms of data transfer too (GPRS class 10, Bluetooth 1.0, IrDA), its specialty was the software’s expandability, as Java applications were really low quality back then, and they could have been used mostly for text entry. Many devices have followed, like Nokia 3650, 3660, N-Gage, Sendo X and Siemens SX1. The common feature of these was that they had expandable memory, and SX1 had a 120 MHz CPU and a 176 x 200 pixel resolution display, of which the system used only 176 x 208, so the top row, 12 pixels in height, was a permanent status bar.

Nokia 7650

The first phone to use Series 60 2nd Edition was the egg-shaped Nokia 6600. The display had 65.536 shades of colors, memory expandability was also available (it had an MMC card), but the processor still had a speed of 104 MHz. It was important for users that version 7.0 supported themes, so the design of the system could have been customized, even if this had its limits. Panasonic X700 and X800 also used this system.

Nokia 6600

These have been followed by 6620, that used Series 60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 1, announced in 2004 January 15. This brought about lots of new services, the most important being: EDGE support, support for cameras with a resolution over 1 MP, possibility of creating new environmental profiles, advanced web browser (HTML 4.01 support, fullscreen view), MP3 and AAC support. The most important was, however, the extended Java feature, called MIDP 2.0. This system has also been used by Nokia 7610, 6260, 6670 and 3230.

Nokia 6620

The first phone to use Feature Pack 2 was 6630, that came in 2004 June 14. On eof the most important features of Symbian 8.0 was that the system could run from a NAND Flash memory, which resulted in more free RAM. This has been the first system to have voice recognition software. The graphical interface has also been more advanced, the new platform had support for OpenGL ES 3D graphics and transparent windows, the list of pre-installed software included Real One player, and the camera’s software has advanced a lot (image sequences, EXIF support). There has been a great leap forward in data transfer too, 3G became supported, the list of Bluetooth profiles included headset and printing (Bluetooth could have been used only for handsfree and data transfer before), and the browser supported file uploading. Three other phones have followed, 6680 had a 220 MHz processor.

Nokia 6630

After a year N90 has been launched, that used Feature Pack 3, and it has been followed by N70 and N72. The most important new feature was support for higher screen resolutions (240 x 320 and 352 x 416 pixels). Meanwhile Series 60 3rd Edition (9.1) has arrived, that used a new architecture, an ARM11 CPU was required to run it. In a few words: real-time kernel, GPS support, possibility of setting backlight from application, Bluetooth 1.2 and SyncML 1.2.

Nokia N90

The first model to be based on 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 was announced on 2006 September 26, this has been N95. Animated screensaver, video ringtones, more alarm clocks, further developed web browser and location-based services were the most important on the list of new features. There are lots of Nokia and Samsung models using this version of the system until the present day. The latest edition is 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, 6210 Navigator (2008 February 11), N96, N78 and 6220 Classic are based on this version. It contains the possibility of shorter development cycles, it has a new user interface, transparencies are present, music and videos can be played while they are downloaded, virtual memory is handled in a new way, web Widgets are supported and Flash Lite 3 is also included. So here we are now.

Nokia N95

Speed, design

Before discussing the functions, I would like to attract everyone’s attention that those written here cannot be considered as permanent facts, that are device-independent, as there can be great differences in terms of speed and features between different Series 60 systems. For writing the test I have used a 6290, running Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1, which is a pretty fast machine, as besides 6700, 6120 Classic, E51 and N76 this is the only phone to have a 369 MHz CPU – it’s interesting that the multimedia monster N95 has only a 330 MHz processor. By the way there are no problems with the speed of the 9.1 system; we might even say that S60 is generally faster than S40.

Active standby on the standby screen, customizable menu view

In terms of usability and design, Series 60 is much like Series 40, so this time I will mostly emphasize the differences. We can enable active standby on the standby screen, this is again very useful. The menu cannot have only grid and list views, but we can also choose horseshoe and V-shaped views too; I think these are more spectacular than easy to use.

Grid, list...

These layouts can be used independently of the theme, but icons can be changed only with them. Nokia usually puts very spectacular files on the phones, but we can easily download new themes matching our personality. Text size can be set in three steps.

...horseshoe and V-shaped layout

In the menu system we cannot only set the sequence of icons, but the whole structure is freely changeable, we can put menu items in different subfolders, so there are no problems with customizability. We can only assign programs to the four directions of the d-pad if active standby is turned off, but I think this won’t be a problem, mostly because we can start programs with voice commands too.

Changing between running programs

Symbian is a multi-tasking operating system, so it can run many programs at the same time. Running programs are signaled by the small blue circle near the icon in the menu, and this is not only visible at the icon itself, but also at the folder containing it. We can change between active tasks after keeping the menu button depressed; we can even close them with the C key, without switching to them.

Features

The phonebook is currently the most advanced that is available on mobile devices. It’s completely dynamic, which means that the amount of data it can store is only limited by the size of the internal memory (meaning that it can handle many tens of thousands of entries), and that we can define extra fields as we want. Yes we can enter there what we want to, so if we’re interested in someone’s foot size than we just have to create such a field, and that’s all.

Dynamic phonebook

I wouldn’t like to waste much time with messaging, S60 knows everything it has to: MMS, e-mail client that handles authenticated IMAP servers and attached files. The call log, however, displays received/rejected/missed calls only on separate tabs, there is no unified view.

Messaging, call log

The calendar knows everything; there is a calculator, unit and currency converter, Adobe PDF reader, Flash player, world clock, advanced alarm clock and sound recorder that can create recordings of up to only 1 hour in length, unfortunately. The basic pack includes QuickOffice, which helps us opening our documents in Microsoft Office format. We cannot edit them, however, fro that we have to purchase the full version of the software. The number of games varies a lot, but Marble and Snake are usually present.

Calendar, alarm clock

Series 60 has the most advanced web browser amongst smartphones. The programs with the so-called minimap is fast, reliable and very easy to use. As it’s very hard to display web pages optimized for desktop computers on the small screen of mobile phones, the developers of the software have created the aforementioned minimap, which is a kind of page map, that appears transparently in the top left corner when scrolling the page in any direction. It looks like the page review feature on the second picture. The browser can also zoom in and out the page and it can block pop-ups.

The software is compatible with HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and CSS 1/2/3 standards and it handles ECMAScripts and Flash content.

Multimedia, summary

The music player is also very advanced. We can sort files by artist, album, genre and composer, and we can use playlists. Bass boost and the five band equalizer are both factory default features, thanks to multi-tasking the player can run in the background. Another welcome feature is that we can seek inside the tracks, seek speed increases proportionally with the time the button is depressed, so there’s no problem in seeking even in mixes that are a couple of hours long. Repeat and shuffle features are of course also present. Lots of models have and FM radio, that has a software that can be embedded in the standby screen, just like the music player.

Features of the camera’s software highly depend on the lens used in the camera, but such basic functions like setting white balance or jpeg compression are available on all models. Night mode, delayed timer and picture sequences are also basic features, while on more advanced phones we can also set sensitivity (ISO value). We can use RealPlayer for playing back videos, but there are such third party software available that support DivX/XviD files.

As it turns out from our review, Symbian Series 60 is one of the most advanced mobile operating systems. Its offer of services, customizability and usability are highly acclaimed, and there are no problems with speed either, on phone from the newer generation. To top all this, the version for touchscreen phone has been under development for a while, we’re very curious about it!

Bocha
Thanks for all the help from (An)Dante in writing the article!

Translated by Szaszati