Smartphones are a class of multi-purpose mobile phones with many conveniences.
But in the past phones were not so improved and people had to create such
intelligent devices.
The first prototype of a smartphone was made in 1992 by Frank Kanova and was
called „Anglo “. A refined version was made by the company Bell south named
“Simson personal communicator”. In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls
the Simon had a touchscreen and could send receive e-mail´s and faxes. It
mentioned an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator,
Beginning in the mid-late 1990s, many people carried PDA – Personal Digital
Assistant which had early versions of operating systems, for example Palm OS,
Symbian or Windows CE. These operating programs would later evolve into mobile
systems. But they were not popular for a long time because of high cost, expensive
data plans or even short battery life.
In August 1996, Nokia released the Nokia 9000 Communicator, a digital cellular PDA
based on the Nokia 2110. The PDA provided e-mail; calendar, address book,
calculator and notebook applications; text-based Web browsing; and could send and
receive faxes. When closed, the device could be used as a digital cellular telephone.
Next devices:
The Ericsson R380 (2000) by Ericsson Mobile Communications
The Kyocera 6035 (2001) with Palm OS and CDMA mobile phone firmware.
Handspring's Treo 180 (2002) with fully integrated Palm OS
Smartphones were still rare outside Japan until the introduction of the Danger Hiptop
in 2002. Later, in the mid-2000s, business users in the U.S. started to adopt devices
based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and then BlackBerry smartphones from
Research in Motion. Outside the U.S. and Japan, Nokia was seeing success with its
smartphones based on Symbian. Initially, Nokia's smartphones were focused on
business with the Eseries, similar to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices at the
time. Until 2010, Symbian was the world's most widely used smartphone operating
system.
In the early 2010s, larger smartphones with screen sizes of at least 5.5 inches
diagonal, dubbed “phablets”, began to archive popularity, with Samsung`s Galaxy
Note series gaining notably wide adoption.
In 2013, Fairphone launched its first “socially ethical smartphone”, at the London
Design Festival to address concerns regarding the sourcing of materials in the
manufacturing followed by Shiftphone in 2015. In late 2013, QSAlpha commenced
production of smartphone desingned entirely around security , encryption and identity
protection. The first smartphone with a fingerprint reader was the Motorola Atrix 4G in
2011.
By 2014, 1440p displays began appear on high-end smartphones. In 2015 Sony
realsed the Xperia Z5 Premium, featuring a 4K resolution display. Microft, expanding
upon the concept of Motorola`s short-lived “Webtop”, unveiled functionality for its
Windows 10 operating system for phones.
As of 2015, the global median for smartphones ownership was 43%. Statista
forecast that 2.87 billion people would own smartphones in 2020.
In November 2018, the startup company Royole unveiled the first commercially
available foldable smartphone - the Royole FlexPai.
The history of smartphones