Future of EPOC and Psion
Philip Crookes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27154.html
What next? I hear you say. But at least it looks like there is still a next!
Philip
JF Mezei
>
> Interesting revelations here:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27154.html
Interesting. When Texlogik appeared on the PSION horison, they were mostly a
DOS shop for its own devices. PSION came in and added SIBO-16 and a bit of
EPOC-32. But now, Win CE is being added to PSIOn gear. Interesting that the
article doesn't mention SIBO which is still used for industrial devices.
What surprised me was the admission that newer versions of EPOC (Symbian) are
no longer equipped to drive PDAs and that it would cost too much for PSION to
build the right GUI and that it would be cheaper to keep ER5 and build on it.
EPOC-32 had been designed to have an easy ability to "wear" different user
interfaces. Seems that this was abandonned by the phone companies and EPOC is
no longer what it used to be.
Seems that PSION didn't protect its own turf within Symbian and Symbian
abandonned the PDA style of GUI for EPOC. That would indicate that PSION had
decided to abandon the PDA market a long long time ago and let Symbian go its
own way.
Sander van der Wal
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:3D87D265...@videotron.ca...
> Philip Crookes wrote:
> >
> > Interesting revelations here:
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27154.html
>
> What surprised me was the admission that newer versions of EPOC (Symbian)
are
> no longer equipped to drive PDAs and that it would cost too much for PSION
to
> build the right GUI and that it would be cheaper to keep ER5 and build on
it.
> EPOC-32 had been designed to have an easy ability to "wear" different user
> interfaces. Seems that this was abandonned by the phone companies and EPOC
is
> no longer what it used to be.
That's not what I can see when examining the UI. The Symbian OS V6 UI
building blocks are almost identical to ER5 (it's CONE at the bottom and
Eikon/Uikon above that for those people who want to know).
Given that Symbian V6 now supports two different UI's (the Nokia 9200 UI and
the Series 60 UI) I would say that Symbian OS makes it easy to wear a number
of different UI's.
This is what the V7 docs have to say about the UI's (» Developer Library »
Symbian OS Guide » User interfaces)
<quote>
UI architecture
The elements of the Symbian OS UI architecture are shown below, with the
dependency relationships illustrated.
[image]
Architectural relationships
The two key components of these are Uikon, a generic core UI framework,
which is present on all Symbian OS phones, and a Product UI, UI libraries
developed by a Symbian OS licensee for a particular phone or range of
phones.
An extra element of UI specialisation for licensees is provided by the
Product Look And Feel (LAF) library. This sets the appearance, such as
colour and size, of Uikon controls.
These components are layered above the UI Control Framework, which defines
the abstract concepts of the user interface at a basic level, and the
Application Architecture, which defines an abstract framework for
applications.
</quote>
Whether Psion can afford writing their own UI on top of V6 (or V7) has
nothing to do with the OS itself.
> Seems that PSION didn't protect its own turf within Symbian and Symbian
> abandonned the PDA style of GUI for EPOC. That would indicate that PSION
had
> decided to abandon the PDA market a long long time ago and let Symbian go
its
> own way.
Why would Nokia pay for Psion's idea of a UI, or why would Psion pay for
Nokia's idea of an UI? Now, both companies can have it thier own way
regarding UI's.
--
Sander van der Wal
www.mBrainSoftware.com
JF Mezei
> Why would Nokia pay for Psion's idea of a UI, or why would Psion pay for
> Nokia's idea of an UI? Now, both companies can have it thier own way
> regarding UI's.
Fair enough. But what seems to have happened is that Symbian just provides
tools to get the IU and each phone company completes the UI to its liking.
The article had mentioned no provision for VGA size screens on EPOC-7. (or
something to that order). That means that a decision was made at one point for
Symbian to abandon the PDA market for which a UI already existed.
But this does make the return of PSION to Symbian based PDAs even more
difficult. The newer versions of EPOC finally contain stuff that PSIOn had
omitted from its early EPOC (such as document conversion etc etc), and it
would be a shame if PSION were to be forced to continue the old EPOC.
They might be better off taking SIBO and giving it a facelift.
Sander van der Wal
> Sander van der Wal wrote:
> > Why would Nokia pay for Psion's idea of a UI, or why would Psion pay for
> > Nokia's idea of an UI? Now, both companies can have it thier own way
> > regarding UI's.
>
> Fair enough. But what seems to have happened is that Symbian just provides
> tools to get the IU and each phone company completes the UI to its liking.
Yep.
> The article had mentioned no provision for VGA size screens on EPOC-7. (or
> something to that order). That means that a decision was made at one point
for
> Symbian to abandon the PDA market for which a UI already existed.
Provisions, what does it mean? What is true that there is no off-the-shelf
UI that Psion can use. They need to do something themselves. I can so no
technical reason why ER5 Eikon cannot be ported to V6 or V7.
> But this does make the return of PSION to Symbian based PDAs even more
> difficult. The newer versions of EPOC finally contain stuff that PSIOn had
> omitted from its early EPOC (such as document conversion etc etc), and it
> would be a shame if PSION were to be forced to continue the old EPOC.
> They might be better off taking SIBO and giving it a facelift.
That would even be more expensive. Adding all the modern stuff (like
bluetooth) to SIBO is a lot more work than porting Symbian OS V6/7 I would
say, And, the SIBO developer community has evaporated, so no programs for
this device any time soon.