The first smartphone turns 20
20 years ago this past Saturday, IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator went on sale. It had a screen, calendar, and could send email, making it by some measures the world’s first smartphone. The phone was not exceptionally well received when it was released. BBC Tech Reporter Claire Brennan joined us to explain exactly what it was.
“It looked and felt very different from the modern iPhones and Androids we are used to,” Brennan said.
It got its name from the game Simon says, a marketing attempt to emphasize the apparent usefulness of the device.
The phone was rather large and heavy, weighing half a kilogram, and was priced at the extreme high end of the market, costing $899 at launch.
The model, which was only sold in the US, was not commercially successful, a victim of its size, expense, and a lack of the digital infrastructure taken for granted today, such as wi-fi hotspots and cellular data.
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