World's First 'Smartphone' Celebrates 20 Years

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Surprisingly similar to present day versions of the smartphone, The IBM Simon, released way back in August 1994 has just celebrated its 20th birthday. The IBM Simon was the first phone that used Apps, could send and receive faxes, but had no access to the internet, since at that time, there was no mobile internet infrastructure. Say hello to the Granddaddy forerunner of your present day smartphone. :cool:
 
Just another example of being first often having nothing to do with dominant market share.
 
But I thought Apple invented the smartphone, the touch screen, the term "App", swipe to unlock, and rounded corners. Say it isn't so?! :eek:
 
That thing sounds awesome for 1994. I bet cell reception and call cost would have been super shitty though.
 
That was back in the days where if you owned a mobile phone or car phone cost was not really a consideration.

I was in high school at the time and I knew a few people that had them. In places like NYC, you had areas with a good signal that dropped after about 500 feet to no signal and then you simply had to go back and re dial the person or hope you got a new signal soon. There was about five different providers and phone ran from about fifty bucks to about two hundred which is what I'm guessing simon went for originally. The GSAT phones were a lot more and cost about thousand dollars a month and needed a clear view of the southern sky. The car phones cost a couple hundred dollars to install in cars and used the car's second antenna. You never had to worry about anyone using it and driving because the area a cell antenna covered was about thousand feet or so and crappy at the ends basically three foot ball fields. Plans ran from thirty to slightly under a hundred dollars a month. this was the era of 9.99 where people thought they were getting a deal because or the cents off that I never understood. The cheap plans had 60 minutes with ruinous rates after that and did not include long distance in that.

So coverage was not spotty in that there were holes, but it was coverage in the holes and no where else. The exception being the gsat phones which bounced off commercial sats. So basically take eighty dollars a month plus 20% service fee, plus another eighty for any long distance ( anyone thinking is unreal I racked up a two hundred phone bill twice growing calling the wrong exchange that should have been a local call), plus a fifty to ninety dollar phone for about 2500 a year when some people rent was less than this a year. There was still rent controlled apartments in NYC you could sublet for about four to five hundred a month, back then.
 
funkydmunky said:
That thing sounds awesome for 1994. I bet cell reception and call cost would have been super shitty though.
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Actually, in 1994... cell phone calls sounded as good as they could get. It was when the infrastructure was still largely unused and cell phones tended to be a luxury or emergency item rather than something everyone had access to. When I'd call up people I was meeting en route on a long drive, they'd ask if I was still at home because the analogue call quality was THAT good.

Cells, comparatively, sound worse nowadays due to two reasons: Digital and severe compression for voice calls.
 
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon

Although the term "smartphone" was not coined until 1997, because of Simon's features and capabilities, it can be referred to as the first smartphone
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Get ready in 3 years for the "celebration" of the first phone actually called a "smart phone"!!

The term "smartphone" first appeared in 1997, when Ericsson described its GS 88 "Penelope" concept as a Smart Phone.
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