‘Father of the iPhone’ is museum piece at 20

EVEN at just 20 years of age it is undeniably a relic from another age, already long consigned to the past.

But, clunky as it may be by modern standards, the IBM Simon has an important place in history – it was the world’s very first smartphone.

Today marks the anniversary of when the Simon first went on sale, and in October it will get a new lease of life when it goes on display as part of a permanent exhibition on the history of communication and information technology at London’s Science Museum.

The phone was developed by computer firm International Business Machines and the US cellular company BelSelf. It was called Simon because it was simple and could do almost anything you wanted.

Charlotte Connelly, content developer for the exhibition, said it was marketed around the idea of the game “Simon says”.

“The marketing was that it was so simple that it could do anything you instructed it to,” she explained. “Compared to today’s smartphones it was incredibly basic, but in 1994 it was far ahead of its time.

The Simon, with its green LCD screen, had a stylus with touch screen technology. Software allowed users to write notes, draw, update their calendar and contacts and send and receive faxes, as well as allowing calls. It even had a slot for cartridges that were primitive “apps”.

But at around nine inches long it was also about half the size of a house brick. It had an aerial and its battery lasted only an hour when making calls. It also weighed the same as half a bag of sugar.

It cost £540 when it first came out, and available only in the US, about 50,000 were sold. The one owned by the Science Museum was bought on eBay for an undisclosed sum.

“It is the first smartphone, “Ms Connelly said. “It is the first time these components were brought together, and although it wasn’t a commercial success it was a pioneer.”