A closer look
Engineers at IBM created the very first smartphone all the way back in 1992, unleashing a massive black brick called the Simon Personal Communicator that cost nearly eleven hundred dollars and lasted barely an hour on a full battery. Long before Apple convinced us that sleek glass rectangles were a fundamental human right, the Simon featured a primitive monochrome touchscreen, predictive typing, and the groundbreaking ability to send a fax directly from your pocket. Despite offering apps for a calculator and an address book, the device was a commercial flop because the average nineties consumer understandably could not justify carrying a heavy, hyper-expensive weaponized walkie-talkie just to check their calendar. It took another fifteen years of relentless marketing and technological refinement before humanity finally accepted that carrying a fragile distraction machine in our pockets at all times was a brilliant idea
