The history of the development of smart phone technology

In 1926, during an interview with the American magazine Collier, "Founded in 1888" described the mythical world.Nikola Tesla“A piece of technology that it will revolutionize one day, and from what he said in this interview:

“When wireless communication technology is fully developed, we will be able to communicate with each other directly regardless of the distances involved. Not only that, but through television and the phone we will be able to see and hear each other as if we are talking together face to face. Even if the distance between us is thousands of miles, and the device that we will use to do these things will be surprising compared to our phones today, and a day will come and any person can carry the phone in his pocket.

Since Tesla did not name this device a smartphone, its expectations are valid !! Where the phone industry went through stages, and developed little by little, and competition occurred between companies over the years until phones reached their current form and became a part of our lives that we depend on for everything.

So who invented the smartphone?

We do not deny the credit of Apple and its founder Steve Jobs in mastering the smart model of phones, which helped the spread of smart phones among people, but there were phones much earlier that were able to transfer data, and also contain distinct applications such as e-mail, and these phones were used widely. Early on, even before popular devices like the BlackBerry became popular.

In order to answer our previous question, we have to ask another question:

Is the phone considered smart if it does not work with touch, no matter how sophisticated it is?

Take, for example, the Sidekick phone, produced by T-Mobile, "a worldwide mobile internet and communication services company with headquarters in Germany, founded in 1990."

This phone was considered advanced in its time, and was widely used, and among its advantages: a full keyboard through which you can send quick text messages, an LCD screen, and stereo speakers. Nowadays, many people carry regular phones that are probably more advanced than the Sidekick phone. Is this a smart phone?

In fact, opinions differed about Define a concept for a smartphoneAnd among those views that have met with popularity, the Oxford Dictionary defines the smartphone “as a phone that performs many computer functions, usually has a touch interface, contains Internet service, and has a system capable of running the downloaded applications” meaning that it is a comprehensive phone. As much as possible.

Now we will start from the minimum word for a smartphone:

IBM Simon phone

Which was said by IBM to be the first device that can be classified as a smart phone as it was at the time a very advanced phone. It is worth noting that IBM is a multinational global company working in the field of manufacturing and developing computers and software. It was established in 1911 and is based in Armonk, New York, USA.

This device is considered the paving the way for the revolution of smart phones around the world, and a copy of this phone was placed in the Science Museum in London and this phone will remain a distinctive tourist attraction in the history of information and communication.

IBM envisioned the idea of ​​a computer-style phone as early as the 1992s, but the company did not unveil it until XNUMX.

The IBM Simon phone was launched in August 1994, enabling users to take notes, draw, edit and update calendar, contacts list, receive and make calls, use address book, send e-mail, browse the Internet, as well as send and receive faxes.

The phone consists of a touch screen LCD with a stylus for use in browsing the phone. The phone measured 9 inches and weighed about half a kilo !! And he had an antenna and a battery that lasts for one hour in the event of a phone call, and a random RAM one megabyte, and its price was 899 dollars, which is currently equivalent to 1400 dollars. About 50 thousand copies of it were sold, and its price was reduced to 599 dollars after 6 months of its launch in Markets due to its lack of commercial success.

Unfortunately, IBM did not develop this phone and it was discontinued in 1995, but by doing so it laid the foundation for phones that combine the functions of a mobile phone and a personal computer, and the word smartphone was not coined again until the year 2000 when Ericsson launched the R380 phone as the first device with a new Symbian operating system.

The advent of the personal digital assistant and its integration with cell phones

With the difficulty of defining a specific concept for phones with multiple features, and consumers ’keenness to integrate smart devices into their lives and search for a single device that combines multiple features.

Stand-alone devices known as the PDA appeared and these devices spread widely among users in the nineties, then technicians worked hard to integrate the features of the personal assistant with the cell phone so that most people would not carry two devices together.

And the first company that specialized in the production of personal assistant and its spread in the world at that time was Palm Company, "an American company specializing in the manufacture of personal digital assistant (PDA) and other electronics, founded in 1992."

The company introduced the PalmPilot as the world's first personal assistant in 1996, and you could put it in your pocket. It had a monochrome glass touch screen and 128 KB internal memory. The device included applications such as address book, to-do list, memo, calculator, and a security tool to hide records intended for private use. And the device could be synced with Windows or Macintosh. It was considered a model for personal computers, and these devices paved the way for the smartphone.

More than 30 million devices were sold in the first decade of the company, and during the production line, the company introduced various advanced models of applications that can be installed on the personal assistant via a computer, other than the mail application, messages, and the stylus.

This device was a portable organizer for businessmen and has some special applications for phones that help the businessman to organize his time.

The company did not continue to lead, however, as other companies competed with it and introduced other, more advanced devices. Competitors at the time were Handspring, with its various devices, and Apple, as well, with its Apple Newton.

The PalmPilot device was introduced in 1996 and stopped production in 2010, and production of this device was discontinued after HP acquired the company that owned it.

Nokia phone 9000

With the beginning of the new millennium, device makers began to integrate the features of the personal assistant little by little into cell phones, and the first remarkable effort in this field was the Nokia 9000, which was presented to the world in 1996, where Nokia launched a group of phones destined for businessmen, and this group began with the Nokia 9000 device, which was A cross between a phone and a PDA.

The specifications of this device are: a monochrome 640 x 200 pixel LCD screen with touch screen buttons, in addition to an external screen. It supports the second generation network GSM 900, and its weight is 397 grams, with a full-letter keyboard. The phone book stores up to 200 names, and can send faxes, e-mail, and SMS messages - Net HTML browser - clock - alarm - and note taking - appointment organizer - to-do list - result - T9 dictionary and calculator, the feature of dividing names into specific groups - The internal memory is 8 MB, and the battery lasts up to 35 hours in standby mode - and up to 3 hours for calls.

Ericsson phone R380

 Manufactured by Ericsson “a company of Swedish origin and one of the leading companies in the field of providing data delivery and remote communication systems.” This phone was released in 2000 and it combines the functions of a mobile phone and a personal digital assistant, and is considered the first official phone sold as a smart phone It was marketed as the first smartphone to combine voice communication, digital assistant functions and use of a touch screen, and it was running on the Symbian OS operating system.

Unlike the Nokia 9000 phone, it was small in size and light in weight, and the phone was equipped with a keyboard in the form of a cover, and equipped with a monochrome touch screen size of 3.5 inches and equipped with a set of applications and Internet can be used on it, so it did not need to install external applications.

Then the competition between the companies began to intensify until other advanced devices appeared, such as the Kyocera 6035, one of the first smart phones that appeared in the American market, which was released in February 2001 and the phone was equipped with a wireless modem provided by Verizon, the largest mobile communications network in the United States. .

Also the following year, Handspring introduced its own products in this area with its distinctive Treo 180 phone.

Then smartphones began to spread widely from east to west. In 2002, other smart devices appeared, as the Sony Ericsson P800 appeared, which included many new features, the most important of which is the MP3 player and a color touch screen.

In 2005, multimedia smartphones appeared, and an advanced series of smartphones appeared, which continued to improve and innovate year after year.

The emergence of the iPhone "phone revolution"

Then came the year 2007 and Apple unveiled the iPhone, this revolutionary device that caused a stir in the world at the time, which Apple gave the slogan "This is only the beginning", as it developed a new model for smartphones, whether through the new interface and the completely new design. And the screen that covers most of the phone, then the company established a store for its various and unlimited applications, whether commercial or free, and iPhone users are increasing day by day and estimated in the millions.

Among some of the iPhone's leading features at the time was the unique iOS operating system. The features of the first iPhone phone were as follows:

Storage Capacity: 4 GB, 8 GB and 16 GB

Screen: Multi-Touch, 3.5 inches, 16 million colors, size of 480 x 320 pixels.

Camera: one at the back, and its accuracy is 2 mega.

In the iPhone there are three sensors, such as the sensor that turns off the screen automatically when connected if the iPhone is on the ear or the screen rotation sensor, as well as the sensor of automatic lighting.

Then came the year 2008, and Android phones arrived, which spread widely, and the first phone to use this system was HTC DREAM.

From then to the present day, companies have been racing against time and innovations are increasing day by day, as they provided personal voice assistant phones such as Siri, Cortana and others so that you can talk with this piece of technology and interact with it and ask it to perform multiple functions and tasks.

Source:

thoughtco|iq2communications