What irks me in particular about the iphone is the sheer number of luddites out there who say it’s revolutionary. It’s not. Everything from the touchscreen to the UI to the idea of  third party apps on a phone has all been done before. If the iphone had come out in 1999 I would have said wow but these days it compares to some of its predecessors like a cheap chinese knockoff does to an iphone itself.

So a history lesson is in order. Read on for a brief history of the (touchscreen) smart phone

In the beginning

It all began back in the early 80’s when Casio not content with making cheap calculator watches decided to release a calculator that also stored names, phone numbers and addresses. The first electronic organiser. It’s also when the controversy began as other companies  such as Psion have laid claim to being the first to produce a PDA or electronic organiser as they were known in the day.

The first PDAs

Apple themselves deserve a big pat on the back when it comes to the development of the PDA. The Apple Newton was launched in 1994 and was definitely a device ahead of its time. Some might say  it even sparked the PDA revolution. However, with weak sales and Apple facing bankruptcy Steve Jobs was called back to save the company, promptly cancelling the Newton.

Palm was the company that made the PDA a commercial success with the launch of its Palm Pilot in 1996. They dominated the market for close to a decade even with the likes of Microsoft entering it.

The smart phone

A smart phone is essentially a PDA mashed with a mobile phone. Who exactly made the first smart phone just like who made the first PDA is a point of contention. Suffice to say it wasn’t Apple. Nokia certainly made the first widely available and (somewhat) affordable smart phone the Nokia Communicator back in 1996. You could probably say that the Visor Phone – an addon for the Palm Pilot was the grand daddy of the iphone. However it was the short lived Nokia 7710 which truly launched the current generation of large touchscreen, multimedia smartphones. The market that Apple leads today.

This phone although long made a dinosaur in the technology department stil holds its ground against the iphone and has many features that iphone owners are still waiting for … five years later.

Where Apple did innovate was in the distribution of applications. Before the iphone you had to buy or download your applications from the software developers direct. Or from aggregators. They were often priced at or just below the equivalent desktop application. People just didn’t want to pay the price and as such there was little motivation to develop applications. Most people made use of what came with their phone.

Next time someone spouts on about how revolutionary their iphone is put them in their place. It’s just another smart phone in a long line of phones.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.