What counts as a smartphone
There is no single moment when a phone became smart. The label is applied to phones that do more than calls and texts, such as running installed programs, handling email, browsing the web and connecting to online services. Because those features arrived gradually, and because definitions differ, this article avoids declaring one device the winner and instead follows the steps that made the modern smartphone.
Organizers meet phones
In the 1990s, many professionals carried a personal digital assistant, or PDA, a handheld device for contacts, calendars and notes. Some used a stylus on a small touchscreen. A natural idea was to combine such an organizer with a mobile phone.
One well-known early attempt was a device developed by IBM and sold in the mid-1990s, which combined phone functions with a touchscreen, calendar, address book and the ability to send email and faxes. It was ahead of its time, but it had limited battery life and a high price, and it sold in small numbers. Other devices followed: communicator-style handsets that opened up to reveal a keyboard and screen, and PDAs with add-on radios. These phones were popular with business users, but they were bulky, expensive and often complicated.
Email, keyboards and mobile data
Late in the 1990s and early 2000s, handhelds focused on mobile email and messaging with small physical keyboards. Pushing messages to a device made it practical to stay in touch away from the office, and these phones became closely associated with business and government users.
Meanwhile, in Japan, a mobile internet service launched around 1999 and offered web-like content, email and small applications through carriers, years before similar services caught on elsewhere. Elsewhere, an early mobile web standard called WAP delivered simplified pages to small screens, but slow speeds and limited content disappointed many users.
The speed of cellular data mattered. Early digital networks were designed mainly for voice, and the move toward faster third-generation networks in the 2000s made browsing, maps and media streaming more tolerable. The underlying wireless networks and growing internet infrastructure were as important as the handset.
Touchscreens and the 2007 turning point
Before the late 2000s, most phones relied on buttons or a stylus on a pressure-sensitive screen. In January 2007, Apple announced the iPhone, which went on sale in the United States in June that year. It used a capacitive touchscreen that responded to fingers and supported multi-touch gestures such as pinching to zoom, plus a full web browser and a large display. Other companies had made touchscreen phones before, so it was not the first, but its combination of hardware and software was influential. The sensing technology is explained in our article on touchscreen sensors.
At first the iPhone did not allow third-party apps beyond web-based ones. In 2008, an app store opened, giving developers a way to sell programs directly to users. Around the same time, the first phone running the Android operating system appeared, in late 2008, and the platform soon spread across many manufacturers. App stores changed the business: instead of carriers deciding which features reached customers, anyone could build a program and distribute it widely.
What made them mainstream
Several factors came together:
- Better screens and interfaces, which made the web and apps pleasant to use.
- Faster mobile networks and data plans, so that being online away from home was affordable.
- App ecosystems, which allowed games, messaging, navigation, banking and many other uses.
- Built-in sensors, including cameras, accelerometers and GPS positioning, which enabled maps, photos and fitness uses.
- Improved batteries and efficient chips, helped by progress in lithium-ion batteries and in semiconductor chips designed for low power.
- Falling prices, as more manufacturers entered and cheaper models appeared.
Changes in daily life
As smartphones spread, they replaced or merged many separate devices: cameras, music players, paper maps and portable game consoles. They changed how people shop and bank, and they helped drive the growth of social media society and of mobile payments. For many people, particularly in places where computers were uncommon, the phone became the main way to reach the internet.
Their influence is not entirely positive. Researchers and the public continue to discuss attention, privacy and screen time, and the evidence on some questions is mixed. It is more accurate to say smartphones changed how people spend time and communicate than to claim a single simple effect.
Looking back
The smartphone was the result of years of work on organizers, email devices, mobile data, touchscreens and software stores, not the invention of one company or day. The 2007 to 2008 period is best seen as the point when these elements were assembled into a product with wide appeal and an open way for others to add to it.