IBM Simon: the world's first smartphone is 20 years old

20 years ago, in August 1994, an unusual device appeared on the mobile device market in the USA: IBM Simon. This device was a hybrid of a mobile phone, PDA, pager, organizer and much more, plus it supported connection to fax.

At the same time, there was no familiar physical keyboard: there was only an on-screen keyboard, called “intellectual, plus a virtual QWERTY keyboard.

Of course, the dimensions of the first smartphone were rather big, and it weighed 500 grams. The developers equipped this wonderful device with an LCD display and a stylus, plus the device was compatible with a PCMCIA card.



The prototype smartphone from IBM, dubbed COMDEX, was introduced two years earlier, in 1992. Well, this smartphone began to be sold in 1994, at a price of $ 899, with a subsequent reduction in price up to $ 599.

The smartphone had its own applications (alarm clock, organizer, e-mail client and some others).

Features of IBM Simon:

• 16 MHz 16-bit processor, Vadem x86-compatible;
• Touch (!) LCD display with a resolution of 160x293 (of course, the display was black and white);
• OS: ROM-DOS, specific version of DOS;
• 1 MB RAM (640 KB available);
• 1 MB of internal memory for system applications (compression is used, so the possible size was slightly larger than the declared one);
• Built-in 2400bps modem;
• PCMCIA slot;
• Weight: 500 grams.

If anyone is interested in detailed information about the device configuration, here are the specifications .

This phone was noticed by representatives of the business sector, and the device was sold in 50 thousand copies. The device was quite popular, and even appeared in the film:



By the way, last year a post was published on Habré with the disassembly of this phone .