I recently decided to dig out my old Psion 3a palmtop from a storage box at home and I’ve been somewhat obsessed with it lately. When deciding to chuck something away, the tidy- living guru Marie Condo asks “Does it spark joy?”. So I looked at my 25-year-old obsolete Psion and thought yes… Yes it does, it sparks considerable joy.
Ahead of its time
The Psion was way ahead of its time with many features that the iPhone has only just recently received in the last 5 years or so. Features such as copy & paste, file management, printing, multi-tasking and all powered by 2 AA batteries! Something that is incredibly refreshing is the flexibility of the OS – just about anything can be tweaked with a specially written Assembly driver which is a huge contrast to the iron-clad security of iOS. This flexibility might also just be its salvation from an e-waste recycling future.