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1984–2012 · Mobile

Psion: the British pocket computer pioneer behind Symbian

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

Psion made some of the best handheld computers of the 1990s, then helped create Symbian, the operating system that ran most of the world’s smartphones before the iPhone.

The Organiser

Psion was founded in London in 1980 by David Potter and began by publishing software for Sinclair home computers. In 1984 it launched the Psion Organiser, a calculator-sized device with a database, a diary and a simple programming language. It is often described as one of the first personal digital assistants, and businesses used later models for stock-taking and data collection.

The Series 3 and Series 5

The Series 3 of 1991 opened like a tiny laptop, ran for weeks on two AA batteries and included a word processor, spreadsheet and agenda. It sold well across Europe and had a loyal following among journalists and business travellers.

The Series 5 in 1997 added a remarkable sliding keyboard that was comfortable to touch-type on, and a new 32-bit operating system called EPOC. EPOC was designed from the start for small, battery-powered devices that should never lose data, and it would soon matter far more than the hardware.

Symbian

In 1998 Psion joined Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola to form Symbian, a company that would develop EPOC into an operating system for mobile phones. The idea was to give phone makers a shared, independent platform rather than depend on Microsoft.

It worked for a decade. Symbian powered Nokia’s smartphones and many others, and by the mid-2000s it ran the majority of smartphones sold worldwide. Psion sold its Symbian stake to Nokia in 2004.

After the handhelds

Psion stopped making consumer handhelds in 2001 and concentrated on rugged mobile computers for warehouses and field work through Psion Teklogix. The name returned to the news in 2008, when it defended its old “netBook” trademark against makers of the new wave of small laptops before withdrawing its claims. Motorola Solutions bought Psion in 2012.

Symbian itself declined quickly after the iPhone and Android arrived and was phased out by Nokia from 2011. But many ideas from the Series 5, including always-on, instant-resume devices that keep your data safe, became normal for phones.

Sources

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