The world's first touch-screen smartphone was released in 1994, its name is also "Simon"

The first Japanese smartphone "W - ZERO 3" has a touch panel and appeared in 2005, but the world 's first smartphone equipped with a touch panel in 1994, which was over ten years ago, has appeared.

Its name is "Simon", which means that it also supported data communication and so on.

Details are as below.
BellSouth - IBM Simon PDA cellph

This is the world's first smartphone equipped with a touch panel "Simon (IBM made)" is. The display corresponds to a touch operation using black and white and a stylus. Customized dedicated processor, 1 MB RAM and 1 MB ROM installed.


Moreover, although "Simon" belongs to the smartphone category, it adopted "Zaurus OS" adopted as Sharp's PDA "Zaurus" as the OS, equipped with the telephone function not included in the original "Zaurus" It is because it has data communication function, application such as mail, calculator, calendar, fax, memo pad, file manager, todo list etc.

"Simon" manual. It covers 88 pages.


The leaflet is like this. Although it was "Simon" which gave birth in 1994 (the official announcement itself was in 1993, the sale began in 1994), despite being the leading edge model of the era, the body size was too large or 899 Coupled with the high price of the dollar (about 73,000 yen), it is supposed to have disappeared from the market before competing products.