When Phones Got Smart

Growing up, I would watch my mother light up cigarette after cigarette

, only to take an initial drag and place the burning butt on the edge of a dirty ashtray. There they remained to send up their lonesome smoke signals until she would eventually snuff them out. Each cigarette got no more than two puffs. Five seconds later, she would light up another one and set it on the edge of the ashtray to keep the twisted heap of extinguished butts company. Why do you smoke? I would ask. You know its not good for you. My moms response? It gives me something to do with my hands.

Flash forward to the present. I am out of town visiting my adult son who has just bought a smartphone. At restaurants, sitting around the kitchen table, watching TV, I discovered my son has inherited his grandmothers cigarette hands. He cant stop lighting up that smartphone of his. Hes constantly playing with apps, checking messages and Googling arcane bits of trivia. I tell him to put it down. He immediately complies. And like my Mom, five seconds later, he is picking it up again. His hands cant stop playing with this clever, high-tech toy.

The History of the Smartphone

The first smartphone was developed back in 1992, when cell phones still looked like walkie talkies. It was called Simon. IBM unveiled the concept at a Las Vegas computer trade show. Simon incorporates all of the functions of a cell phone, a fax machine, a pager, a calculator and a PDA. Two years later, BellSouth was marketing it. Unfortunately, Simon was ahead of its time. There were few early adopters of this all-in-one marvel. The gadget fizzled.

Next, Nokia took the Hewlett Packard palm pilot and added their best-selling mobile phone. The year was 1996. This little monstrosity literally hinged the two items together. The prototype looked like one of those duct-taped contraptions that your Louisiana cousin might have concocted. They launched it as the Nokia 9000 Communicator. It was big, black, looked like a coffin and was as heavy as a brick. The Nokia 9000 had the added distinction of being the most expensive cell phone ever marketed.

By 2001, a company called Handspring was doing hand springs about their new inventionthe Palm OS Treo. This smartphone featured a full keyboard, wireless web browsing, e-mail, a calendar and more. Finally, in 2002, something hit the market called the BlackBerry. And the rest is history.

The birth of the iPhone

Following the advent of the very successful BlackBerry, there have been numerous other purveyors of smartphone ingenuity. The most notable is Apple Computers. In 2007, they launched the iPhone. It was dubbed Time magazines Invention of the Year. The iPhone offered consumers a sleek, user-friendly design with a touch screen virtual keyboard and thousands of third-party applications. BlackBerry owners made the switch. And scores of people who never had a smartphone wanted this one. The iPhone comes with GPS tracking technology, a built-in video camera, ginormous iTune capacity and hundreds of cool features. Today, sales of the iPhone smartphone have surpassed 17 million. And it continues its seductive siren call to more and more first-time smartphone adopters.

Now go into any coffee bar, burger joint or movie theater and you will see the ubiquitous impact of the various smartphones. Row after row of individuals with zombie-like stares texting, Googling and gaming on their smartphones. Yup. They just cant put them down.

by: Artie Megibben

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