New Psion Revo for consumer market escapes early

A surprise Psion product aimed at the volume consumer market has escaped early in a mail order catalogue ad. Psion intends to announce the £255.31 (ex tax) Revo on Monday, but the fact that the catalogues are already printed indicates the company is trying to return to its old approach of not making announcements until it has sufficient volumes to get the product in the stores immediately. The Revo also looks like a resumption of another old strategy, that of putting out cheaper, lower-specced machines beneath the flagship product (in the handheld sector, this is currently the Series 5mx). Dare we hope that Psion has managed to get on top of connectivity at last? The catalogue ad says it has email and mobile phone managers, and the picture of the machine, which is Series 5-like, clearly shows a phone icon on the touch bar. Fingers crossed, friends. It weighs 200g, looks pretty much like the 5, and has 8MB of memory. The ad doesn't mention storage slots, so we'd guess there aren't any, but it does say it includes PC data synchronisation and docking station, and mains adapter. No pic of the docking station, unfortunately, but it's intriguing -- Psion docking previously has amounted either to a cable/IRDA connection (the Revo has IRDA and RS232), or a PC Card adapter, so it's not clear what the new docking station is intended to do. By a happy coincidence (?) the Revo should be hitting the stores in step with another big brother, the larger Series 7. This was formally announced earlier this month, and scheduled to go on sale by the end of September. ®