The Psion Series 7 FAQ

Software and functionality information relating to the Psion Series 7

Below is a list of additional questions which link to other pages.

To view the contents of this page please scroll further down now.

Software information

No. Although I'm sure it has enough CPU power to decode MP3's, it neither has the audio capability to make it worthwhile or even the software to do it. The next version of the EPOC platform will be able to play MP3's.

Update - You can now play MP3's without Java on a Series 7 (Or other EPOC device) using Alexander Zavorine's command line beta MP3 player.

There is a problem with new machines where the default user dictionary is strangely write protected. This means that clicking on, "Add to dictionary" while spell checking can result in, "Personal dictionary not available" appearing in the top right-hand corner of the screen. This is not a bug and can be fixed easily by finding C:\System\Data\User.dic unprotecting the file using Ctrl+P and then deleting it. You will now be able to add words to the user dictionary from any application that supports spell checking.

They're colour! ... apart from that not much. Of course they have been modified to fill the larger screen but I wouldn't say they have been improved for the larger colour screen that much. The browser is easier to use and you can use bigger fonts in Agenda even for busy days, but in most cases the apps have just been stretched down or rearranged to try and fill up the screen. The Time application looks rather bland and doesn't even display a large analogue clock. Some applications such as Calc and Record simply display the same 640×240 view from the Series 5 in the middle of the screen. Comms doesn't support colour codes and colour images imported with PsiWin are converted to 4-shade grey.

Yes. The app is exactly the same as on the S5 but has a pallet of 16 colours made up of black, white, two shades of grey and 6 base colours, of which each has a light and dark shade. Interestingly, Sketch can import and export 256 colour MBM files although obviously if you edit them you are limited to using the 16 colours on the pallet. Also if you use the, "Reverse colour" function, many of the 12 colours are flipped into other colours not on the pallet.

The ROM is v1.05, but the O/S itself is v1.02. It contains EPOC Release 5 (ER5) and although there is only limited support for colour in this release (It's the same platform as the 5MX), Psion Enterprise have adapted the applications as much as Symbian's sofware allows. There are some areas where colour support is lacking with colour printing being one of them! It's uncertain if there will be any physical ROM upgrade however since the chips on the ROM board are actually Flash memory, it's expected that Psion will release downloads that can be run from the Internal disk once to overwrite the ROM board; similar to a netBook but without the need for a CF card (Though the Series 7's ROM board has a 16MB capacity). Actually an advantage the Series 7 is its ability to rewrite individual areas of the ROM rather than having to change the entire ROM image (currently over 12MB). This means that downloads for Series 7 users should be far smaller than for the netBook.

As Psion licence further EPOC Releases from Symbian, some more downloads may become available from the Psion website to enhance the Series 7. Certainly there will be updates for netBook users.

It should be remembered that unlike ER5, which brought enhancements and refinement to ER3 using the Eikon user interface, ER6 will be quite different with four separate reference designs catering for different device categories. Development in ER6 will centre around communications for better integration with mobile phones, smartphones and wireless tablet devices so many of these new features cannot be included in any Series 7 ROM upgrade that may appear anyway. What would be interesting is if any hardware upgrades became available however this is highly unlikely. Any additions such as Bluetooth or an integrated mobile phone would appear in new machines or peripherals such as the Psion Dacom Bluetooth PC-cards.

16MB, which is 6MB larger than the 5MX. The browser is included in ROM on the S7 and of course the other apps have been adapted for colour and VGA. Also the system supports a PC-card which is listed as drive E.

Yes and very easily too. The slot is below the base of the screen between the two hinges and is accessible without any tools or dismantling. However if you don't want to blow the ROM board or certainly the RAM expansion board with static from your hands you are advised to leave it well alone. Touching any of these slots will result in your warranty being void. An interesting point is the fact the chips on the "ROM" board are actually Flash memory. This means it's very possible Psion will release updates via their Website (rather than a physical upgrade kit) that in a similar way to the netBook, can be used to overwrite the internal ROM. Unike the netBook however, the Series 7 allows sections of the ROM to be overwritten saving the user having to download the entire platform every time they update.

Yes, but disappointingly so. I was hoping they would take advantage of colour to separate countries or even show textures, time-zones etc. Instead they have simply coloured the land green and the sea blue.

Unfortunately not. It would be nice to see but I think they will leave this sort of thing to third party developers. There is a freeware program like this for the Series 5 called Solarmap. It's currently doesn't run in colour but adapts to the VGA screen perfectly.

Unfortunately not, however an additional application from SG Software includes this along with other mobile phone utilities. You can read more about Phoneman Pro and download the latest version from the SG Software website

Early machines came with the same PsiWin 2.3 CD that ships with the 5MX which only listed the S5/5MX as EPOC machines although a small sticker with the S7 logo was put on the cover. Modern copies should be aware of the Series 7.

As well as PsiWin there are browsers for the S5 and 5MX neither of which concern the S7. The only things that a S7 user would be interested in are the various documents (OPL guides, PsiWin manual, shareware information etc) and of course the Java software. The JVM runs on ER5 rather than a specific machine, so although it is listed as 5MX Java it's equally at home on a S7. There's also a separate browser plug-in to allow Java applets to run. Note that Java and Javascript are two totally separate technologies and installing Java will not allow Javascript to run on a Series 7.

Installing Java will allow you to run compatible Java applications that work with Java 1.1.4 and applets in the browser. Some users have been able to update to Java 1.1.8 though this isn't supported by Psion and still doesn't allow Java2 applications and applets to run.

Java is available as a software add-on and sits on either the internal disk or another drive. To install the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) copy the SIS file from the supplied CD-ROM to the S7 and click on it. That's it! This will use around 3MB of disk space and a further 3MB of RAM to run in. When installed you will also see the Java browser plug-in listed in the General settings of Web 2.0. Users intending to install a lot of Java programs may wish to get the optional RAM card fitted to add an additional 16MB to the internal disk.

Yes. From a range of 16 colours you can choose the background colour, grid colour, graph-fill colour and border colours. You can also choose from six additional fill colour patterns for the graph and can choose the colour of all text including the title, graph values, axis etc.

You can but it's a bit long-winded. If you start a new entry and press Ctrl+Shift+F to bring up the font settings, you can only change the size and emphasis of the text. The card that normally changes the colour is there but it's blank! Instead you have to click on, "More" and go through the cards there to get to the colour control where you can choose between 16 colours. The colour of the font does not automatically change after the entry has passed or if a dated entry on a to-do list is late.

Bombs, just like the S5. It's not really been adapted for colour so apart form icons on the toolbar and one bitmap for the bomb, the game is still in black and white. Even the explosion is in 4 shade grey.

Like the Series 5, you can either type, "z:" into the browser or press Ctrl+Tab in the system screen and then select the Z:\ drive at the top of the screen. You cannot edit the Z drive in any way, either by adding, deleting or renaming files. Also any applications copied from the Z drive will produce a corrupt error when run from another disk or other machine. This is one of the reasons you cannot copy applications to a Series 5.

Although imported desktop images are converted to greyscale by PsiWin, you can still successfully export embedded images from the Series 7 to colour BMP files. Also on the PsiWin CD contains an extra utility called BMConv.exe which runs on a PC. This will convert either way between MBM and BMP format and the latest version supports colour. Files can either be converted one at a time or in batch.

Another option is to use MBMview on the Series 7 itself. This shareware application allows you to import GIF, JPG, BMP, TIFF and AIF files and export MBM, GIF, JPG and BMP . Quality isn't as good as found in desktop conversion and it requires a lot of RAM but is still usable and will allow you to send images as Email attachments from the Series 7 to others who can view them instantly.

By pressing Ctrl+FN+Shift+S in any view. On the S7 you can can make screen grabs in five ways; 256 colour, 16 colour, 16 shade grey, 4 shade grey and plain black and white. Note that MBM files saved in a greyscale mode, even 4-shade grey, cannot be viewed on devices running ER1-ER4. This includes the Series 5, Geofox One, Osaris and Philips Accent.

Unfortunately the Series 7 includes the standard ER5 monochrome printer drivers as found in the 5MX, MC218 and Revo. As these drivers have no colour support it is currently impossible to print in anything in more than four shade greyscale. All of the 256 colours are substituded with the either black, white, light grey or dark grey. A beta version of a postscript printer driver by Andrew Johnson is available which prints colour text, however images are still printed in black and white.

If you find this has happened, or that only some icons on the Extras bars seem to move after a soft reset you have probably placed the icons directly from the Extras bars view screen by clicking the title bar or pressing Enter rather than from the Control Panel. Strangely if you set your Extras bars preferences from the Control Panel they will be retained after a soft reset but will be lost if set from the Extras bar view itself.

There is no postscript driver standard in any EPOC device at present, however Andrew Johnson has released a working driver for ER3 and ER5 machines. As well as providing postscript printing for devices like the Series 5 or Ericsson MC218, it also allows partial colour printing from the Series 7, with the current version limited to printing text in colour and images in greyscale. You can find out more and download the drivers for free from his website

Cash flow functions

IRR(guess,cash_flows)

NPV(interest,cash_flows)

Date & time functions

DATE(year,month,day)

DATEVALUE(datestring)

DAY(x)

HOUR(x)

MINUTE(x)

MONTH(x)

NOW [Returns the present time]

SECOND(x)

TODAY (Returns the day number)

TIME(hour,minute,second)

TIMEVALUE(timestring)

YEAR(x)

Depreciation functions

SLN(cost,salvage,life)

SYD(cost,salvage,life,period)

DDB(cost,salvage,life,period)

Information functions

CELL(information,range)

ERROR.TYPE(x) Returns a number between 1 and 7:

#NULL! #DIV/0 #VALUE! #REF! #NAME? #NUM! #N/A

ISBLANK(x)

ISERR(x)

ISNA(x)

ISERROR(x)

ISLOGICAL(x)

ISNONTEXT(x)

ISNUMBER(x)

ISTEXT(x)

N(x)

TYPE(x) Returns a code:

1 (Number)

2 (Text)

4 (Logical value)

8 (Formula)

16 (Error value)

T(x)

Logical functions

FALSE

TRUE

IF(x,then,else)

AND

NOT

OR

Lookup functions

ADDRESS(row_number,column_number)

COLUMN(x)

COLUMNS(range)

HLOOKUP(x,range,offset)

INDEX(range,column,row)

INDIRECT(x)

LOOKUP(x,range1,range2)

OFFSET(reference,rows,columns)

ROW(x)

ROWS(range)

VLOOKUP(x,range,offset)

Mathematical functions

ABS(value)

ACOS(value)

ASIN(value)

ATAN(value)

ATAN2(x_value,y_value)

COS(value)

DEGREES(value)

EXP(value)

FACT(value)

INT(value)

LN(value)

LOG10(value)

MOD(value1,value2)

PI

RADIANS(value)

RAND

+RAND [random number which does not change with recalculation]

ROUND(number,number_of_digits)

SIGN(value)

SIN(value)

SQRT(value)

SUMPRODUCT(range1,range2)

TAN(value)

TRUNC(value)

Statistical functions

COMBIN(n1,n2)

PERMUT(n1,n2)

AVERAGE(list)

CHOOSE(x,list)

COUNT(list)

COUNTA(list)

COUNTBLANK(list)

MAX(list)

MIN(list)

PRODUCT(list)

STDEVP(list)

STDEV(list)

SUM(list)

SUMSQ(list)

VARP(list)

VAR(list)

Text functions

&

CHAR(x)

CODE(string)

EXACT(string1,string2)

FIND(searchstring,string,start_position)

LEFT(string,n)

LEN(string)

LOWER(string)

MID(string,start_position,n)

PROPER(string)

REPLACE(string,start_position,n,newstring)

REPT(string,n)

RIGHT(string,n)

STRING(x,n)

TRIM(string)

UPPER(string)

VALUE(string)

Psion Series 7 FAQ sections: