Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone (Full Documentary)

46 Comments

1. What was your first smartphone?

2. At this time I could just aford a Palm Zire and a Nokia Cellphone. But I thought already, how cool it will be to have all of this functions in one device like the Palm Zire together. I don't remember, that the Handspring Visor ever reached Europe. It could really revolutionize the market, if it was better promoted and sold around the world.

3. iPhone 3G

4. yo i had one of the blue pdas back in the day and felt like a boss.

5. the first real smartphone was a portable laptop as in all smartphones are just a terrible computer in a small package. and if anyone knows about terrible computers its The Verge.

6. Yeah baby! I was a Springboard geek! My wife and I were 1999 early adopters with the GSM module. They were awesome! I was checking my email and veeeery basic browsing in 1999 at 1RX speeds. It was still awesome though! TCP/IP on a palmOS device. I could actually use my phone to VNC adn ssh into my servers FROM MY PHONE!

   From there.. we jumped-on the Treo 300 "Communicator".. An awesome evolution that paved the way for second-Steve and his little device called the iPhone.

7. Huawei get this guys a job and beat iphone.

8. gonna use my "handspring" later maybe

9. Still have my treo in a draw.

10. Dieter Absolutely Beautiful Documentary.Some incredible history and Thank You to the Handspring Family.Can’t tell how much I enjoyed.Deb ✌️

11. No mention of the early Ericsson smartphones starting in the early 2000s. Like the R380 and P800. Or even the GS88 in 1997, but that's pushing the definition somewhat, even if that is what coined the term "smartphone" :).

12. They're secretly infecting food ⛓ to get covic19, to eat, or clean viruses by light or 5g.

13. Thank you, the document is great and detailed!

14. My first smartphone was a Treo.

15. Another problem they had was that even by the mid 1990's, the mobile phones from the likes of Motorola had become much smaller, & fitted into the briefcase of a business person very easily. And with a Palm Pilot or similar a person had 2 very good devices. And other brands such as Casio were getting into those devices too. By the mid 90's the Motorola mobile phones were really good & worked real good. So people would have got used to using 2 really good devices & maybe in no hurry to ditch them.

16. My first smartphone was one i built myself, i used a sweatband as a wrist strap to prevent electrostatic damage, and i made sure the power supply circuitry was fitted upside down.

17. Iphone missing features? hahahahaha

18. Great piece, Great Memories, great research…glad you are doing so well!!

19. The company I used to work for created apps for Handspring PDAs. My first phone was a Treo 270.

20. Yes, Handspring did it first. VisorPhone on a Visor was my first cell phone. The problem was, at the time, you still had to use a dial up internet account to access the internet. And carriers charged you HARD for doing so. The other problem was the Visor's expansion port was a pin-swapped version of PCMCIA. Had they left the pins in the right order, they would have opened the door to far more development. Treo happened at the worst possible time, when techies like me were struggling to find work. When things started coming back, Blackberry was the phone to have. A better OS than Palm. iPhone was too limited to compete with Blackberry on initial release, and then along came Android to make Blackberry obsolete. And here we are with just those two OSes to choose from.

21. The first concept of the so-called "Palm" device was actually designed by a teenager in southwest Michigan in the late 70's, and by none of the original Palm founders. The idea was actually discussed by the teen and the person who was with him was using the phrase "it fits in your palm".

22. My first smartphone was a Handspring with the Visor phone

23. This documentary is diamond .. it helps connecting the dots in our recent tech history and where it was originated.

24. Wow, entertaining, insightful and very well shot. Congratulations!

25. No mention of the dud Microsoft phones

26. Still have my nice Handspring PDA, really loved it.

27. IPhone 1000

28. awesome documentary ! Congrats! holding my handspring visor ! XD

29. Very well done documentary. Pioneers get arrows from behind.

30. Loved the story. I remember Palm Pilot and being curious. At that time I had a Motorola flip phone and a pager. When the Visor came out with the Springboard, that seemed revolutionary to me, and when one of the attachments was phone, I was hooked. It was amazing the level of integration. and vision. I remember upgrading to the Treo 180, and though it was a bit wonky, it was so much more advanced than mobile phones. I still recall how the Visor/Treo were criticized by my friends and work mates noting how much larger it was compared to these ever decreasing in size flip phones. Today, I still chuckle a bit that humans have no problem with a huge smartphone compared to the Treo 180. Thanks for the doc.

31. Love it.

32. Bellissimo documentario. Very beautiful, also how Handspring's people were honored. Thank you.

33. I remember Palm pilots. It was popular between some geeky ppl and airplane pilots. Using stylus was not much handy.

34. us nurolink the next thing….internet connected to our brain….after i watch this document…makes me wonder about leap into future now…

35. I loved my Visor & my GPS module.

36. I had one of these. It was baby blue.

37. I wanted one so bad back in the day, but I was a poor teenager alas. Honestly if they could modernize it, I would still buy one.

38. I was a devoted fan of Palm and Handspring early on.
    I still carry a Treo smartphone next to my Android.
    Why? I have a lot of databases and apps that I use all the time.
    If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

39. Palmsoft did have a purpose. Other hardware manufacturers used the Palm OS besides Handspring. Sony, for example.

40. I had shares with them 😭 Glad I still bought some Apple.

41. Great documentary! Love the credits with the Palm font. 🤩

42. I worked for the company that manufactured the wireless modems used in the Handspring PDA phones. I loved the phones. I had about 60 of them. LOL. (we had tons of parts from testing). Worked at Novatel Wireless for the Palm devices, and Wavecom for the Handspring devices. Fun times.

43. GREAT documentary! Takes me back. It's amazing to see how far the smartphone platform has gone in 20 years.

44. i lived through this, and all this isn't exactly true

45. About 2007 Treo 600 and an HTC HD2, still love them.

46. The Palm Treo was my first smart phone 🥲

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