The World’s First Smartphone Was ‘Smarter’ Than You Think

The world’s first smartphone, IBM Simon Personal Communicator, was launched on 23 November 1994.

Simon Personal Communicator was the world’s first smartphone  

(Photo: The Quint/Erum Gour)

You see so many smartphones of different brands flooding the market today. They come in all shapes and sizes, trying to outdo each other with their cool quotient .

And while humans have been digging deeper and deeper into history books and legends to find out the origin of life, thank God we don’t have to do the same for smartphones!

We know exactly where it all started.

It was Motorola who shook the world in 1983 and set the wheel in motion by launching the first Mobile phone – The DynaTAC 8000x. Though it was mobile, it wasn’t smart by any means.

Mobile technology started getting smarter with the introduction of PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant) or what people called personal communicators.

AT&T were pioneers in this technology at that time, but the tech they offered was too bulky. Also, laptops were slowly making inroads into the digital world.

It was on 23 November 1992 at the Comdex computer industry trade show in the US that history was made, where IBM ( International Business Machines corporation), in a hush-hush manner, unveiled their prototype and the world’s first smartphone, then code named Angler.

It was in 1994 that IBM launched the phone for commercial use and named it Simon Personal Communicator – the world’s first smartphone. FYI, it was manufactured by Mitsubishi.

So, how smart was the world’s first smartphone?

Well, apart from making regular phone calls, Simon was capable of sending and receiving faxes, e-mails, and supported apps like address book, calendar, calculator and even a notepad thanks to its touchscreen display and stylus. It had 1MB of RAM and storage as well.

However, it’s fame was very short lived and its production was discontinued in February 1995 after selling almost 50,000 units.

Today, a smartphone is an integral part of your life and there’s no way you can live without it. Amongst a sea of smartphone brands out there, don’t forget that it was IBM that started it all.

Cameraperson: Abhishek Ranjan Chaudhary
Video Editor: Cyrus John

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