smartphone is a mobile phone with highly advanced features. A typical smartphone has a high-resolution touch screen display, Wi-Fi connectivity, Web browsing capabilities, and the ability to accept sophisticated applications. The majority of these devices run on any of these popular mobile operating systems: Android, Symbian, iOS, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. While personal cellphones have been around since the 1970’s, the creation of the smartphone, unveiled by IBM, an American computer hardware company in 1992, excited consumers in an entirely new way. After all, the three decades between the first mobile phone and the first smartphone saw the advent of the modern Internet, an invention that sparked the very beginning of the digital telecommunication phenomenon we see today. According to Simple Texting, the first smartphone, created by IBM, was invented in 1992 and released for purchase in 1994. It was called the Simon Personal Communicator (SPC). While not very compact and sleek, the device still featured several elements that became staples to every smartphone that followed. For example, the SPC was equipped with a touch screen as well as the ability to send and receive both emails and faxes. It had a calendar, address book, and a native appointment scheduler. It even featured standard and predictive stylus input screen keyboards! These features were different and advanced enough to deem it worthy of the title “World’s First Smartphone”. However, it wasn’t until the year 2000 that the smartphone was connected with an actual 3G network. In other words, a mobile communications standard was built to allow portable electronic devices access to the Internet wirelessly. This upped the ante for smartphones, making things like videoconferencing and sending large email attachments possible. The true smartphone revolution, however, didn’t start until Macworld 2007, when Steve Jobs revealed the first iPhone. Previous phones relied on keypads and could only navigate a watered-down version of the internet. The iPhone’s large touchscreen could flip through websites just like a desktop computer, all while looking sleeker than anything consumers had ever seen before. This is according to sciencenode.org. The 5G networks predicted for 2020 promise even faster speeds and increased bandwidth that experts think may enable life-changing technologies like real-time telemedicine, virtual reality training, and truly smart cities. With that kind of connectivity, a smartphone might become your next (and only) work computer. Scientists are even experimenting with building a supercomputer out of smartphones.
