What was the first 'modern' smartphone?

[Geoff]

There's a lot of early PDA/Phone crossover stuff from both Palm and later HP that could be considered a 'smart' phone.

[Domino]

You could argue they never did...

Didn't they rebrand their corporate identity to Blackberry when they released there touch screen phone earlier in the year?

 

They've actually had touch screen handsets out before that. the Storm for example.

[Danp]

I think the P800 fits the bill, at that point Sony should have followed that up with their 'iPhone' and taken over the world, they missed the boat and have played catchup since.

[twin--turbo]

I'd be looking at the 02 XDAs personally, they had a pile of them. The XDA IIi or IIs in late 2004/early 2005 predates the iPhone and fits all of the criteria.

 

The Palm Treo 650 was released at the same time and also meets the criteria.

 

The XDA was the one I was thinking of..

 

Was definitely 2003/4 one of our colleauges had one.

 

Rob

[twin--turbo]

Xda II

 

The successor to the Xda, the Xda II, was released in November 2003.

 

Intel XScale PXA263 (400 MHz)

128 MB SDRAM, 64 MB ROM

3.5" Transflective 65,536 colour LCD (240×320 pixels)

I/O: cable (USB, RS-232), IrDA, Bluetooth, SD flash card & SDIO flash card

Integral VGA camera (640×480 pixels)

HTC codename: HTC Andes, but variants were known as HTC Himalaya

[featured_spectre]

Sony lock you into a technology that on-one else uses? Who'd thought it?!

 

Apple?! lol

[dezt]

I was thinking along the lines of the O2 XDA as well

[markcuk]

would of been a phone released in the Japanese Market we never seen over here.

[glennda]

Something from the Nokia N Series? Nokia Nseries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2005

[hardtailstar]

the HTC TyTN? HTC TyTN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I had the TyTN 2

[Flatpackhamster]

It makes it a hell of a lot easier to use though This is why I am pointing out (one more) the 'modern' aspect of smartphones. If someone said they were going to issue you with a smartphone and you got one without a touch screen you'd be a bit miffed.

It does baffle me as to why it took RIM so long to release one!

 

My first question would be 'Does it have a keyboard'. I do an awful lot of writing on my Blackberry, and the thought of typing like a 4-year old and relying on predictive text to correct my fingerslips, as opposed to being able to churn out lots of WPM, brings me out in a cold sweat. Don't see what the fuss is about touchscreens. I do accept I'm probably not a typical phone user.

[tmcd35]

I was going to include GPS as a feature but it was still a novelty in many phones until a few years ago. Anyway, over to you guys. Lets see what you can come up with and don't hesitate to suggest new criteria (please note it must be a universal criteria and not a feature that favours a single manufacturer/product).

 

Okay, in an attempt to save a little face (I forgot totally about the XDA, and tbh hadn't really heard of HTC until they started releasing Android phones)

 

Aren't a number of these sensors like GPS, motion and accelerometer a key feature "modern" smartphones. Some of my most used apps include Sat Nav and a cycle computer. I think there's an argument that a modern smartphone is more than a mobile with a built in PDA, or a PDA with a built in phone; which is what most of the earlier devices really where. I'd also continue the argument to suggest that perhaps 3G and a modern web browser is an important part of the spec.

 

(yes, Apple fanboy finding any excuse to discredit true pioneers )

[chazzy2501]

The Nokia N95 was the first phone I really WANTED. Came out in 2007, supported web browsing with flash support. Bluetooth, wifi, GPS, 5MPx Rear camera a CIF front camera, wireless podcasts downloading, accelerometer. It also offered wifi hotspot.

 

This at the same time the iphone had no app store or even MMS with Rubbish bluetooth 1.0, a weedy speaker and a rubbish 2Mpx camera.

 

 

EDIT: I bought the iphone a year later.

Edited March 15, 2013 by chazzy2501

[Dos_Box]

The Nokia N95 was the first phone I really WANTED. Came out in 2007, supported web browsing with flash support. Bluetooth, wifi, GPS, 5MPx Rear camera a CIF front camera, wireless podcasts downloading, accelerometer. It also offered wifi hotspot.

 

This at the same time the iphone had no app store or even MMS with Rubbish bluetooth 1.0, a weedy speaker and a rubbish 2Mpx camera.

 

We've just replaced my wife's N95. By the end it had become such a mess to use. Just setting up 3G on Vodafone was a half hour job. It may have been cutting edge when released, but was unusable by time we retired it. She'd on Android now and loves it!

Part of the problem was that developers abandoned it for the iPhone and Android once their stores got up and running, and the apps that were available were not the best to begin with.

[Arthur]

Able to access the Internet via a system other than wi-fi/bluetooth/tethering i.e WAP/3G

I don't think anything that used WAP to access the Internet could be classed as modern.

[Arthur]

http://s13.postimage.org/3v0ou20lh/smartphones_past_present_future.png

[SYNACK]

No touchscreen or Wifi but I had a HTC SPVC500 which was rock solid hardware and did all sorts of stuff it took the iPhone years to catch up to. It even survived being dropped in a basin full of water while I was on a call.

 

I also had a HTC P9090 that did all those things at around the same time.

 

This was a looong time before the IPhone ever existed, June 29, 2007, the latter had 3G, a browser - several in fact and did MMS, had extendable memory etc. etc. Even many years later when I was just using it as a mobile media player (playing Xvid - something the iPhone still does not do) I had people asking what it was because it was doing stuff they did not think a phone could do.

 

When the iPhone came out and all the iSheep were bleating about how revolutionary their little false idols were I did wonder what kind of brain damage they had suffered as I had had those features for literally years.