Surely the world has changed a lot in the last two decades. Technological improvements transformed our lives, making it easier for us to communicate with each other and discover new things at the push of a button. Today, billions of dollars revolve around the smartphone market every year, with approximately four hundred million users worldwide. But do you remember when it all started? Do you remember how it all started?
The year was 1994 when IBM came up with this slogan: “Mobile communications made easy.” The slogan marks the birth of the world’s first smartphone, or personal communicator, as it was called in those days. The phone was designed by IBM and given the name Simon. This revolutionary device acted like a cell phone but at the same time offered much more than just voice communications. Users could employ IBM’s Simon as a wireless machine, an email device, a pager, a calendar, an address book, a calculator, or a pen-based drawing pad. I know, this would just qualify as a low-end smartphone. these days, but in 1994 it was a big deal.
Whoever became interested in the phone had to pay a high price to be able to enjoy its capabilities. No less than $899, which is a lot of money even as we speak, not to mention 17 years ago. The personal communicator was quite heavy, weighing over a pound, and had a liquid crystal display, or LCD, while also offering a telephone and computer keyboard. It was as if you had a computer built into your cell phone that really made you stand out from the crowd.
When used as a cell phone, Simon could offer all of the standard cellular features, including all of today’s classics: last number redial, last 10 number redial, a built-in 911 emergency call button , address book audio dialing, and even roaming preference. On the other hand, when Simon was used as a personal communicator, users found it easy to access the phone’s graphical user interface, which used icons and online help screens that made the device much easier to use. It obviously had limited storage capacities, but you had the option to increase it via a PC memory card slot. The same card slot allowed users to add a pager card if they wanted to receive electronic messages both nationally and locally, thanks to MobileComm, which was IBM’s pager company. Also, the slot contained an organizer function and a calendar, which could have been automatically updated from a remote computer.
Even without the slot card mentioned above, Simon still had the ability to send and receive email through most public email systems. Plus, with Simon, you can create faxes and memos using pen touch screens or even write them directly on the screen with the use of a stylus. The moment you feel that certain fax, your handwriting was reflected exactly as it was, without being digitized to look like a printed word. The technology created a great frenzy in those times and is also constantly used in the present, being called pen annotation. This is not the only patented technology that Simon brought to customers. Have you heard of predictive keyboard? Of course you have! Well, you may not have heard of it if it wasn’t for Simon, the first smartphone to use this technological marvel from IBM. Using the predictive keyboard, only part of the keyboard was displayed on the LCD screen and the user selected some letters, Simon predicted the next letters that he would probably use. By comparison, it was like the Siri app on Apple’s iPhone 4S; it was simply able to blow your mind. The impact he had on people was huge, he even appeared in the popular movie ”The Net”, where he ”played” an important role.
The IBM Simon was undoubtedly a great piece of technology; it revolutionized communications and pioneered everything that the smartphone industry means today. Although it was ahead of its time, with the passage of time it was nothing more than a huge, heavy and terribly expensive device, so today it is nothing more than a remnant of the past and only of interest to collectors.
