zlacker

>>alphab+(OP)
This is a meta comment, but I think it's extraordinary that we're only 15ish years from the first smartphone release and we've already reached the "boring" incremental improvement phase for these tiny pocket supercomputers.

Consider how long it took PCs to reach the same stage (with a fraction of the adoption). It was like 20 years from Kenbak-1 to the 90s PC era.

>>grepLe+x61
In addition to the other comments about pre-iPhone/Android smartphones, another part of the story are the devices that preceded even those, the personal digital assistant (PDA). There's the well known PalmPilot and various Windows CE PDAs like the Compaq iPaq and Dell Axim and even earlier, now largely forgotten devices like the HP 95LX and 100LX, a DOS based palmtop PDA that was really quite capable for 1991, and probably a few even earlier than that. So the evolutionary path to the modern smartphone probably stretches to 30+ years.