Who made the first touchscreen smartphone in history?

08:43

By: Azzat Manal

Who made the first touchscreen smartphone in history?

The iPhone is often credited with revolutionizing the smartphone industry when Apple introduced it in 2007. Samsung and other major manufacturers later helped make touchscreen devices a global standard. But the story of touchscreen smartphones began more than a decade before the first iPhone.

Among the pioneering devices was the IBM Simon Personal Communicator, widely regarded as one of the earliest commercially available mobile phones to combine cellular communication, personal digital assistant functions and a touchscreen interface.

IBM unveiled the Simon in 1992, before commercially launching it on August 16, 1994. At the time, the device represented a major technological step forward, bringing together several functions that would eventually become standard features of modern smartphones.

The Simon featured a 4.5-inch resistive touchscreen. Unlike today's smartphones, its screen did not respond to a light touch from a finger. Users generally had to apply pressure, often with a stylus, to interact with the interface.

Resistive touchscreen technology relies on flexible layers that come into contact when pressure is applied. The resulting electrical change allows the device to determine the position of the touch and translate it into an action.

The Simon was far more than a conventional mobile phone. It offered email, fax capabilities, a calendar, contact management and note-taking tools, as well as built-in applications such as a calculator and a drawing program. The device ran on a customized operating system derived from GEOS and featured a 16 MHz processor and 1 MB of RAM.

Despite its innovative design, IBM Simon failed to become a mass-market success. Its relatively large size, limited battery life and the underdeveloped mobile data infrastructure of the mid-1990s restricted its practical appeal. Around 50,000 units were reportedly sold before production ended in 1995.

The Simon's limited commercial success illustrates an important point in smartphone history: touchscreen technology alone was not enough to transform the mobile phone industry. Faster networks, more capable software, improved hardware and more intuitive user interfaces were also needed before smartphones could become mainstream.

Other touchscreen devices followed. The Alcatel One Touch Com, launched in 1998, featured a 2.8-inch touchscreen and WAP browsing capabilities. In 2000, Ericsson introduced the R380, another device that combined mobile phone functions with personal digital assistant features.

Nokia continued the trend with the Nokia 7710 in 2004, its first touchscreen phone. It used resistive touchscreen technology and offered features such as web browsing and PDF viewing. However, it did not achieve widespread popularity and was discontinued in 2005.

The development of these early devices laid important groundwork for the smartphone revolution that followed. Although the iPhone became the product most closely associated with the modern touchscreen smartphone, the technology and concept had already been evolving for years. IBM Simon therefore occupies an important place in mobile technology history as one of the devices that helped define what a smartphone could eventually become.