Psion: the British pocket computer pioneer behind Symbian
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 1984–2012 STORY
Topic
Mobile
Before smartphones settled into a two-platform market, mobile was a crowded field of handset makers, network experiments and public worries about what the technology might do.
Timeline
- 20033G services launch in the UK.
- 2007The iPhone is announced; a short-lived claim links mobile phones to bee colony losses.
- 2008Android’s first phone goes on sale.
Explainers
PalmSource and the Linux Palm OS that never quite arrived
In 2004 the maker of Palm OS promised to rebuild it on Linux for phones. Ownership changes, few devices and the iPhone overtook the plan, and Palm went its own way with webOS.
THE 2004–2009 STORY
Mobile phones and the vanishing bees: how a scare story was cleared
In 2007 a newspaper report suggested mobile phone signals might be behind the mysterious loss of honeybee colonies. The researchers it cited disagreed, and later science pointed to other causes.
THE 2007 STORY