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Shaun over at Palm 247 has just posted a video demo of how mobile technology should work. The device in question runs off a couple of AA batterys and still has a battery life longer than all of the UMPC/Pocket PC devices, has an office suite that would humble the mighty Softmaker office, has a screen resolution of 640×240, Is in a form factor not unlike the HTC Universal, has a keyboard that is superior to every other mobile device on the market (can you touch type on any HTC device?) , runs the Opera Web Browser, Full pop3/Imap client, can send SMS via phone, has its own macro programming language,  supports compact flash and was launched in… er… 1999

Yes the Erricson  MC218 was a rebadged Psion 5MX and offered a set of features that we still drool over now. Certainly the office suite which supported object embedding has never been equalled since.

Yes it does lack some things, most noticably a colour screen, mp3/video support and wireless connectivity. Although colour and wireless did come later in the very UMPC looking netpad and netbook devices.

A colour/bluetooth version of its little brother the Psion Revo+ was rumoured to exist shortly before Psion pulled out of the consumer market.

So what was the point of today’s little history lesson? Well partly to walk down memory lane and think of what we might have had if Psion hadn’t pulled the plug after a disastrous co-venture with Motorola, Partly to remind the Apple fanboys that the Newton wasn’t the first PDA (Psion3 beat it by about 3 years), but also to point out to those people who are worrying about the death of the PDA that these things never really die. The features, OS, form factor may change, but in 10 years time there will still be some small portable device that goes with us, and reminds us that it’s our Aunt Shirley’s Birthday next week.

source: palm 247

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