Almost very PDA in the market had a fairly distinct OS -- or at least custom "spins", not unlike android today with manufacturer customizations.
I owned (and loved) several palm OS based devices, but I always looked at the folding "tiny laptop" form factor of the Psion series (and the Zaurus) with major nerd envy.
Personally I think the refusal to move past passive-matrix 640x240 screens seriously impaired them. Even as late as 2005, NEC was marketing thousand-dollar MobilePro palmtops with the same dogshit DSTN LCD from 1998's Jornada 680.
You could beef them out pretty strong
[1] Wikipedia tells me it’s a “light version” of the computer in TFA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Revo
I still have my Revo in a drawer though. As of five years ago, it was still able to power on. I found the form factor of this device to be great. It was light, energy efficient, actually pocketable and could actually be used for serious productivity in a way that modern phones cannot: I was touch typing all my courses on it with no issues. It sad how Psion / Symbian failed to thrive in the early 2000s.
I am sure can do better with current tech, but instead we get features we don't need such as backlit screens, bloated OSs and way less battery life despite higher latencies and bigger batteries.
Just like calculators, which hit peak with TI89/92/v200.
We didn't need it back then. Why would we need it now?
If anything, I'd expect current tech to give better contrast and readability than psion 5 series, at lower power, with higher resolution, while still running passive lit.
I had several psion 5 and 5mx units. Loved them.
Later I switched to a Nokia 9210 Communicator (Nokia Series 80), basically a Psion 5 with networking and phone integration and a nice screen.
My living-the-future-moment was in the early 2000s sitting in car on the phone, then opening the phone, automatically switching to speakerphone and loading a spreadsheet to check some data. Later I emailed the sheet to a colleague and send the sheet as a fax from the phone to a customer. All from a single device.
Even without using data, managing phone book and SMS via the pocket computer was a quite satisfying experience. I used to read and write emails with it, one of the first compact mobile office setups back then...
Forgive my ignorance but my ISP does DPI so any website on their blocklist is not permitted and I can't do anything about it so https or http doesn't matter.
Again, I am not talking about e2ee or SSL for payments or stuff but "surfing". If there are tech like DPI, whats the point of pretending " security"? From ISP that is.
There has been a number of viruses and malware, distributed by ad networks.
HTTPS provides basic protection for the user, from their ISP.
