Rise of the handhelds

The past decade has seen rapid advances in mobile technology

Back in 1998, phones could only do voice calls and text messages, while PDAs were little more than personal organisers with no real communications capability.

The roots of modern devices can be traced back to several different sources. PDA maker Psion had a vision of fusing computers with phones to make a new device category, and in 1998 went into partnership with several phone makers to form Symbian. The first Symbian smartphone, the Ericsson R380, shipped two years later.
Meanwhile, Research In Motion (RIM) was developing a handheld terminal to give users email on the move. This launched in 1999 as the RIM 850. Later models were called BlackBerry, and came to the UK in 2001 when GSM support also enabled them to make voice calls. Also in 2001, Handspring – now part of Palm – introduced the Treo180. This was a crude combination of a Palm PDA with phone circuitry tacked on, but paved the way for later Treos.

In 2002, Microsoft unveiled a version of its PDA platform adapted for phones, along with the first device to use it – Orange’s SPV. This was the direct ancestor of modern Windows Mobile devices. Soon, even PDAs had Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or phone capability, and often all three, leading to the converged devices we see today.