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Ericsson's take on epoc
Ericsson's take on epoc

The Symbian alliance has persuaded Matsushita (often known outside Japan as Panasonic) to join the funding alliance behind Symbian. The partners in Symbian are now: Psion, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushita. This happens just as the first full fruit of the Symbian alliance is being announced for shipment in 2000: this being the R380 from Ericsson, an epoc driven mobile phone; the key pad flips up to reveal a full sized (for epoc) display. Ericsson have already announced the MC218, a much revised version of the Psion Series 5, where the applications are significantly different. This should ship in July or August this year. The MC218 would be rather less interesting, if it wasn't that it is first announced product built upon epoc Release 5 (ER5), the latest release of Symbian's OS, and supports WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). WAP, along with Bluetooth, is one of the technologies that will bring about the next generation of mobile connectivity. It defines a network level of communication between devices, in a way that (unlike IrDA) is independent of the physical communication layer. WAP is specifically designed to work with mobile phone protocols, and optimises versions of existing protocols (like HTTP, HTML and TCP) to work efficiently in a wireless environment, as well as use other existing protocols (IP, UDP, XML) where they fit.



A mobile phone...
A mobile phone...



that opens into a Psion
that opens into a Psion

At the same time, there are rumours going around that Microsoft are having meetings with the Symbian partners and other phone manufacturers in a last ditch attempt to persuade them that Windows CE will be up to the task, in a future version, possibly with the code name "Rapier".

Staying with epoc for a moment, it seems that there should be a version of the Opera web browser available for epoc on the Psion Series 5 very soon. The Opera developers have been porting to various other OSes recently, and the EPOC port is apparently well advanced.

http://www.wapforum.org
http://www.operasoftware.com/alt_os.html



Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: August 19, 1999

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