

Ask HN: What's the first smartphone? - Nimsical

First, let&#x27;s define what I mean by &#x27;the first&#x27;.<p>The first smartphone, I&#x27;d say, should be defined as the first device that was attributed to be a smartphone (either coined the term or was introduced as a smartphone) and as would have been available for purchase by the mass market (even if it was expensive). I think it could be argued that the first designed or prototyped smartphone should be considered and thought about, but I think a product that actually made it to market is more worthy of that title.<p>I&#x27;ve been looking around a bit and the most prominent out there is Simon (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessweek.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2012-06-29&#x2F;before-iphone-and-android-came-simon-the-first-smartphone) but not sure if that&#x27;s exactly the case.<p>Would love to hear everyone&#x27;s thoughts!
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eksith
It's always a tricky thing to pinpoint when great tech first came this way.
Sometimes, we're not even sure if it was great tech when it makes a splash so
that may be part of the reason.

I was able to find this that corroborates with BW on the Simon :
[http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/09/18/20-years-ago-the-first-
sm...](http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/09/18/20-years-ago-the-first-smartphone-
was-developed-whats-next-for-mobility/)

If you're ignoring the "phone" bit of "Smartphone", it's basically a PDA
first. So the first PDA would be the Organizer by Psion :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser)

If you want to mix PDA and phone proper, the first time that happened was with
the Nokia 9000 :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator)

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munimkazia
I had a sony ericsson walkman phone which had an app store. I installed a nice
chat application which let me chat on Google talk and facebook. It's email
client was pretty decent (for the time), it ran Opera mini, and it also had a
twitter client. I guess that was smart enough to be called a smart phone. The
phone was also about a centimeter thick, and in that time (probably even for
now), it was sleek and beautiful. I miss that phone.

