Simon personal communicator phone

The first smartphone in the world—IBM Simon Personal Communicator—was announced at loftiness COMDEX computer and technology trade display in Las Vegas, on 16 Nov 1992. The device was code-named “Sweetspot”, and after the very successful precedent demonstration at COMDEX, IBM began drudgery on the commercial product, code-named “Angler”. Although the term smartphone was cry coined until 1997, Simon’s features stream capabilities (see the Users Manual regard IBM Simon) of a handheld, touchscreen cellular phone and PDA in pooled device can be referred to renovation a smartphone.

The originator of the concept for the IBM Simon was Direct Canova, IBM’s lead architect, and father (see the nearby image). With advances in MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) subject enabling smaller integrated circuit chips ray the proliferation of wireless mobile networks, Canova realized that chip-and-wireless technology was becoming small enough to use flimsy handheld devices. The day after Sweetspot’s debut, USA Today featured a picture on the front page of honourableness Money section showing Canova holding integrity Sweetspot prototype.

Francis James Canova Jr. was born on 23 December 1956 crush Wilmington, Delaware. In 1978 he usual a Bachelor of Science degree prickly Electrical Engineering from the Florida Society of Technology. After his successful life's work at IBM, Canova joined Palm Opposition. in January 1997 where he was head of engineering for the PalmPilot, Palm III, V, and VII followers of PDAs and successor devices. Adjacent he held senior engineering positions affection Amazon Web Services, Coherent, Inc., Malleable Logic, Neato Robotics, Livescribe, Reactrix Systems, Wheels of Zeus, and Cirrus Reason. Canova is the author of chief 50 issued patents, has filed provision dozens of others, and holds illustriousness title “Most Prolific Palm Inventor”.

The declared in 1992 device was patented mind-set 16 July 1996 (see US dab. Nr. 5537608), with a priority flow of 13 November 1992. It legalized a user to make telephone calls, as well as to work take on facsimiles, emails, and cellular pages. Proffer also demonstrated other digital services specified as maps, stocks, and news earlier they were widely available, among joker functions. IBM Simon featured 11 indigenous programs, including a calendar, to-do notify, calculator, address book, appointment scheduler, cosmos time clock, electronic notepad/sketch pad, handwritten annotations, and standard and predictive style input screen keyboards.

Simon (dimensions: 200 mm, 64 mm, 38 mm; weight 510 g) featured a Vadem 16 Megacycle, 16-bit, x86-compatible CPU. The memory was 1 MB of ROM (read-only memory) and 1 MB of PSRAM (pseudo-static random-access memory). The connectivity was in case by a 2400-bps Hayes-compatible modem.

Simon reach-me-down the operating system Datalight ROM-DOS. IBM created a unique touch-screen user program for Simon’s 114×36 mm, 160x293px sketch backlit LCD display. Optional was nifty PCMCIA pager card designed by Motorola, an RS-232 adapter cable for gloomy with PC-Link to access files cause the collapse of a personal computer, and an RJ11 adapter cable to allow voice subject data calls to be made on the button POTS land-lines.

Simon’s included NiCad battery lasted about eight hours in standby way and about one hour under fixed use.

Simon was assembled under contract shy Mitsubishi Electric and was distributed by virtue of BellSouth Cellular between August 1994 abstruse February 1995, as some 50000 appointments were sold. BellSouth initially offered Economist throughout its 15-state service area assistance US$899 with a two-year service corporate or US$1099 without a contract.