It's interesting how many false starts we had before the smartphone became ubiquitous. We had the Simon, Palm, then Nokia and Sony-Ericsson both with Symbian and different UI layers, WAP, various Windows CE devices, Blackberry pager descendants, and I probably missed a lot of them.
It was really the touch screen UI, which was brought to market by Apple. Always been curious if it was developed there or if like the desktop windowed UI it was pioneered elsewhere.
Prior efforts were menu oriented or attempts at desktop UI on a tiny screen, like WinCE.
Psion is the big one - the Organiser, Series 3 and Series 5 in particular. The latter was the genesis of Symbian, which Motorola was also a partner in.
Isn't it interesting that some companies like IBM and Siemens completely lost the ability or will to produce end user products? (Before you answer that your kitchen appliance is from Siemens, let me tell you it is not. It's from Bosch who put a Siemens sticker on it).
I love the pace of the commercial btw, which could also have been done by Vsauce.
It's interesting how many false starts we had before the smartphone became ubiquitous. We had the Simon, Palm, then Nokia and Sony-Ericsson both with Symbian and different UI layers, WAP, various Windows CE devices, Blackberry pager descendants, and I probably missed a lot of them.
Japan's i-mode was a HTML-based smart mobile service that was very popular from 1999 to 2008:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode
At 80M subscribers, it was probably the most popular way in the world to access mobile internet pre-iPhone.
I-mode also introduced the original set of emojis that are now supported everywhere.
It was really the touch screen UI, which was brought to market by Apple. Always been curious if it was developed there or if like the desktop windowed UI it was pioneered elsewhere.
Prior efforts were menu oriented or attempts at desktop UI on a tiny screen, like WinCE.
> I probably missed a lot of them
Psion is the big one - the Organiser, Series 3 and Series 5 in particular. The latter was the genesis of Symbian, which Motorola was also a partner in.
You should watch the Apple Newton commercials too:
https://youtu.be/lkg4EAK0Y30
I love stuff like this. There's a great episode of the 90s PBS show Computer Chronicles with a ton of these:
https://computerchronicles.tv/#episode/1103
(Though at the time of this comment the Internet Archive seems to be down so if the video doesn't load, that's why.)
Isn't it interesting that some companies like IBM and Siemens completely lost the ability or will to produce end user products? (Before you answer that your kitchen appliance is from Siemens, let me tell you it is not. It's from Bosch who put a Siemens sticker on it).
I love the pace of the commercial btw, which could also have been done by Vsauce.