When did the first smartphone appear? The first mobile phone prototype came from Motorola in 1973. The first one approved, affectionately called The Brick, came out in 1983. In 1992 an IBM engineer created the Sweetspot but it didn't hit the market until 1994, as the IBM Simon Personal Communicator. The first text message was sent in December 1992. The first time we see the term "smartphone" used, was by Ericsson with their GS88 that came out in 1997. Mobile gaming didn't begin until 1997.
- The first game Snake appeared on the Nokia 6110 from a Finnish developer. We had to wait until 1999 for the front-facing facing camera, the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, and GPS functionality with the Benefon ESC. The back-facing camera appearing in 2000 from Sharp with their J-SH04. Then 2001 brought 3G and 2004 came with live assisted GPS technology from Qualcomm. Doom first appeared on mobile phones in 2005, on the Motorola Razr V3. Yes, the flip phone some of us had.
- By 2007, we had the iPhone and that for me is the start of the real smartphone era. By 2008, we had the first Android phone called the T-Mobile G1, or HTC Dream. This unit came with a slide-out keyboard and a touchscreen. In 2009, we got the 4G network and in 2019, 5G arrived.
- Perhaps you think of smartphones in terms of applications, or apps. The IBM Simon came with apps like the calendar, email and notes. By the late 1990s, we had games and other utilities. The iPhone changed the look and feel of applications. By 2008, the Google App Store had arrived, allowing for third-party applications to appear for both Android and iOS.
- By 2010, phones were in the mass marketplace with applications that covered communication, media and commerce. By 2020, we had digital payments, on demand services and enterprise solutions. Sometime around here, the smartphone became an almost essential piece of equipment for all manner of people at all social levels. It essentially replaced the digital wristwatch that first appeared in 1972.
- So, depending on how you count, we've had smartphones for 20-30 to years. Why is it then that in 2026 there is no easy and reliable way to transfer all your stuff from one phone to another? Case in point, Australian carriers are stopping service for a number of phone models, across all brands, because of a new rule implemented for emergency services.
- This affected a number of people, including my elderly mother who had to get a new phone after getting a new one two years earlier. I found a reasonably priced Samsung A27, within her budget. I started with Samsung's Smart Swap software. You install it on both phones, connect them via a cable or Wi-Fi, and it's all supposed to happen. It worked on the old non-Samsung phone but on the Samsung device the required QR Code did not display, so we could go no further.
- Luckily Google backup handled the data side and then it was a matter of copying some files, installing the apps and transferring the accounts. Some of that is still in progress but at least the phone got the green checkmark from the carrier. Yes, there are third-party products that might work but who wants to pay half the price of a phone for a one-time service. Samsung gets a huge mark of fail here, as does the smartphone industry in general for not making this process simple and seamless.
- Governments have been trying to control the internet and its users for a long time now. North Korea does it by turning off access for everyone, except for a select few. Iran did it recently by simply shutting everything down that it had control over. The problem for Iranian leaders was that some people had Starlink and the only person who ultimately controls that that is Elon Musk.
- Government will pass legislation without understanding how things work in the real world. For some unfathomable reason governments in the UK, the EU, Canada and Australia are surprised by a VPN (Virtual Private Network). VPNs don't track age. Now they are unsuccessfully trying to control VPNs. Latest case in point is Utah in the USA where a new law makes it compulsory for any site that the state says needs age verification, to impose those checks on anyone physically in Utah, regardless if they are using a VPN. This would be the same VPNs where the primary purpose is to prevent the geolocation of their users.
- This is a paradox. To create such age checks would require the whole world to accept Utah's requirements. This is clearly not practical or any kind of option, as VPN providers don't work that way. Blacklisting VPN ingress or egress IP ranges doesn't work for very long as VPN operators are adept at moving and changing these as required. Every time a government tries to do something about this, the result is a more resilient network that costs even more to try and mess with.
James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
