Ben Lovejoy
For anyone who was born this century, the idea that life before iPhone even
existed would probably be hard to imagine.
Fifteen years after the first iPhone went on sale, we've all grown used to
having the ubiquitous device in our lives.
The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone - but it was the first smartphone to
appeal to ordinary people. Of course, I'm not ordinary people: I'm a geek
who owned a whole bunch of the digital devices which preceded the iPhone .
Life before the iPhone: PDAs
Once upon a time, people carried their diaries, contacts, and other key
information in paper form - with Filofax the paper equivalent of the iPhone.
This was a portable ring-binder system for which you buy scores of different
inserts, from different diary layouts to expenses sheets.
My first move to a digital version came in 1984 - the year the Macintosh
came out - in the form of the Psion Organiser. I then upgraded to the far
more usable model II in 1986. This looked every bit like a calculator with
letters instead of numbers. It had a single-line mono LCD display, and a
protective cover for the alphabetic keyboard. No communication capabilities
unless you bought the optional RS-232 interface to connect it to a computer
via a cable.
I988 saw the launch of the much more pocketable Casio Digital Diary.
This had the clunkiest user-interface you could possibly imagine, including
a pressure-sensitive keyboard (think bubble-wrap), but the portability was
truly incredible.
SF-4000
One PDA I did not buy was the Apple Newton! I'd never had the best
handwriting in the world, and from the early 80s already did most things on
computers, not paper, so a handwriting-based device had no interest for me.
I think I probably went through a few generations of Digital Diaries or
similar, but the next device I can remember buying was the Psion 5mx in
1999. Although PDAs were still standalone devices, this was the first one to
offer Internet access via an infrared connection to a smartphone - in my
case, the much-loved Nokia 8110, aka the Bananaphone. The great thing about
the 5mx was the fact that, feature-wise, it was pretty much a laptop in a
form factor which fit into a larger coat pocket. It also had an absolutely
incredible keyboard for such a small device.
Life before iPhone: Early smartphones
My first smartphone was the Nokia Communicator 9210 in 2001. This
effectively combined the functionality of the Psion 5mx with a phone, and
was my first device with on-board Internet access.
The keyboard was a big step back, and I didn't like the user-interface as
much, but it was a truly incredible device for its time. It fit into an
ordinary sports jacket pocket. On the outside, it was a phone. On the
inside, it was a PDA. Six years before the iPhone, it was a phone, an
internet device, and a musi- Ok, it was a phone and an Internet device.
A PDA called the Palm Pilot evolved into the Handspring Treo 180. I played a
small role in the development of this, running consumer focus groups to get
reactions to the concept. This was a super-pocketable device with a stylus,
but a lift-up flap revealed a keyboard. The keyboard wasn't the best, but
the pocketability proved irresistible, and after having the use of a
prototype for a while, ended up buying one when it launched in 2002.
By 2005, I was back to something closer to the Nokia Communicator form
factor, with a slide-out keyboard instead of a fold-out one - but much
smaller.
Made by HTC as the HTC Apache, it was sold under a variety of names by
different companies and carriers. I think my first one was called the
Windows Pocket PC.
Then came the iPhone
At the iPhone launch in 2007, Steve Jobs famously made fun of the sorts of
devices I'd owned beforehand. Nobody wants to use a stylus, he declared,
when you could instead use your finger. And he laughed at the idea of a
hardware keyboard as a waste of space.
He was of course right, and it wasn't long before the rest of the smartphone
industry emulated the form factor of the iPhone. But it was those early
devices which paved the way, and created the market which Apple would turn
upside-down.
Those are my memories .
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