The first smartphone was developed by IBM as a concept product in 1992. It was called Simon and was placed on the market in 1993. By today's standards, it would be considered a low end product, but it was quite advanced at the time. In addition to use as a mobile phone, Simon was equipped with a calendar, calculator, world clock, note pad; the ability to send and receive faxes, and of course games. There were no physical buttons, but a predictive key board and touch screen. Text could be entered with a stylus. Of course people wanted more so the Nokia communicator line came out in 1996 combining Hewlitt-Packard's PDA (personal digital assistant) with Nokia's best mobile phone. Early models combined the PDA and phone via a hinge. Nokia also had the first camera phone and the first Wi-Fi smartphone.
Things just exploded from that time forward for the innovation of the Blackberry, Palm Treo, and Windows smartphones. By that time, you could also send and receive email. In 2007 Nokia introduced a smartphone with GPS, an auto focus camera, 3G and Wi-Fi capability. In the next few years these features became standard on high-end smartphones. Today we have Android, iPhone, and many others. As fast as you can learn to use one device, someone comes out with something faster and better and we all want the latest gadgets. Of course as things are more widely available, the prices come down. Smartphones come at many price points and if you just have to have the latest thing, you can probably afford it.
Today smartphones are more than just mobile phones. They are more like a handheld computer. They have much more computing ability and connectivity than a typical mobile phone. With a smartphone you can install and run all kinds of advanced applications and you can not only communicate, you can shop online, download recipes and games, check your bank balance, text, take pictures and videos, and of course you can talk to your friends. That doesn't even scratch the surface of what you can do with one of these little devices. It is estimated that 77% of people in the U.S. have a smartphone and it is the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone industry.