Communications · Vol. VI|Smartphone|2007 (iPhone as mass template)
Smartphone
2007 (iPhone as mass template)
A smartphone is a pocket computer that is also a radio, a camera, a map, and a store of other people’s software. There were smart phones before 2007. The iPhone, and the Android wave that answered it, made a capacitive slab the default computer for billions. The invention is integration and a software market, not a single chip.
Many prior phones; Apple’s 2007 product as the template others matched · Global (design in California; manufacturing in East Asia)
How the mechanism is arranged
How it works
- A system-on-chip runs an operating system.
- Radios talk to cellular, Wi-Fi, and satellite-timing networks.
- A touchscreen and app store make the same hardware many products.
Why it mattered
- Moved the web and the camera into a pocket, always on.
- Made location, notification, and payment a personal infrastructure.
- Concentrated attention — and surveillance — in one object.
Who turned the wheel
What it unlocked
For further study
- Computer History Museum, mobile computing. Pre- and post-2007.
- West and Mace, ‘Browsing as the killer app’. iPhone as web device.
Check
Which earlier landmarks have to coexist in one slab for a smartphone to exist?