From foldables to clamshells and cameraphones, there’s always something new on the smartphone release scene. And whether or not you’re due an upgrade is another matter entirely – statistics suggest most people replace their smartphones after 2 to 3 years. That said, with manufacturers now offering longer software updates and Google offering 7 years on the Pixel series, you may want to keep your phone a little while longer.
The first smartphones were hybrid devices that combined existing PDA operating systems – Palm OS, Newton OS, Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC – with basic mobile phone hardware. This created devices that were bigger than dedicated mobile phones but smaller than PDAs, with a touchscreen and access to push email and limited text-based Internet browsing.
During the 2000s, the term “smartphone” entered common use to describe these hybrid devices. The Nokia 9000 Communicator, released in 1996, was an early example. It featured a clamshell design with the display above and physical QWERTY keyboard below, running a custom version of EPOC (renamed Symbian at Release 6) that enabled e-mail, calendar, address book and calculator applications as well as limited Web browsing via a resistive touchscreen.
It was also the first phone to offer a built-in mobile video recording feature, enabling users to capture 320×240-pixel images at up to 120 frames per second. This allowed for the creation of some of the world’s earliest mobile games, such as Snake, which appeared on Nokia’s 6110 hand-held handset in 1997 and started the massive global gaming industry.