The History of the Phone
1994
FIRST SMARTPHONE CREATED BY IBM
INTRODUCTION
In 1992, IBM had revealed what people at the time believed to be a revolutionary device. This being known as the first smartphone and containing many capabilities than the current cell phones during that middle 90’s. This ‘revolutionary’ device was known as the Simon Personal Communicator. This new device had contained many of the elements that we see in our current day smartphones. As with many new things it can hard to get the best head start, especially in the technology aspect of the market. (TEXT REQUEST, n.d.)
IBM
The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), is an American multinational technology company. They were based in New York and had operations in over 170 countries.
SIMON PERSONAL COMMUNICATOR
This smartphone was first revealed during the Autumn season at the COMDEX convention that was held in Vegas. Even though this was classed as a ‘smartphone’, it had no access to web-browsing. However, the Simon Personal Communicator had email access, at this time was a big selling point. Also began with the code name of ‘Angler’.
The smartphone itself was 8 inches long, 2.5 inches wide, 1.5 inches thick and weighed a massive total of two ounces north of a pound.
It’s believed that the Simon Personal Communicator smartphone had only spent as little of six months on the technology market and only selling 50,000 products. The cause of this failure of the first smartphone was the battery life. Which only lasted an hour. To think back to the 90’s the Simon Personal Communicator was quite advanced compared to the other technology devices that were around at that time.
PRICING
If you compare the price of the Simon Personal Communicator smartphone to the modern-day smartphone, they’re very similar. For example, the most up-to-date apple iPhone can start from $1,000 and can vary above or below that start price, as for when the Simon Personal Communicator was first launched, its fixed cost was $1,100. If the customer however was to take out a two-year contract for the Simon Personal Communicator smartphone, the maximum price they would end up paying would be $900. Which as time went on it dropped to $600. (World Economic Forum, n.d.)
FEATURES/APPS
As it stands in todays modern technological world, seeing a touchscreen phone isn’t a huge surprise. However, during the mid – 90’s, even though touchscreen wasn’t exactly non-existent, they weren’t exactly popular either. The Simon Personal Communicator had therefore become the first commercially phone available with a touchscreen. The slight issue that came with this would be that it could mainly be used with a stylus and less so with a touch of a finger.
The smartphone also came with several preloaded apps but did not come with an app store. The apps that featured on the Simon were:
· Address Book
· Calculator
· Calendar
· Fax
· Filer
· Note Pad
· Sketch Pad
· Time
· To Do
When it came to set up the email on your device, it came with a lot of difficulty. It used Lotus’ cc: Mail Offering, which meant you needed to dial in a computer running cc: Mail Software which held all your messages.
Another feature that was added to the Simon Personal Communicator smartphone was called the ‘PredictaKey’ and was believed to always preview the six most-likely letters the user may need. Depending, of course, on the letters that are being typed.
Although the target consumers were high end businesspeople, it still showed the trouble of cell service which may of the buyers off. IBM considered this and added an optional cable that allowed the consumer to plug in the Simon smartphones standard phone jack to make phone calls more reliable and too away the expense on land-line systems. (TIME, n.d.)
Bibliography
TEXT REQUEST. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.textrequest.com/blog/history-evolution-smartphone/
TIME. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://time.com/3137005/first-smartphone-ibm-simon/
World Economic Forum. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/remembering-first-smartphone-simon-ibm/