IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993) : Touch screen,one of the first attempts at a commercially viable smartphone

The IBM Simon Personal Communicator was one of the first attempts at a commercially viable smartphone. The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept product[9] that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. It used a touchscreen and optional stylus to perform the majority of its functions, which included dialling phone numbers, sending faxes and writing memos. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games.It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus

.

See Also :

Nokia Communicator : the first of Nokia's smartphones

Ericsson R380 : the first phone sold as a 'smartphone'

Palm Treo : Palm OS smartphone

BlackBerry RIM850 : the first smartphone optimized for wireless email

HTC Dream : The first phone to use the Android OS

(old handphone - www.old-handphone.blogspot.com)