Yes, and it took around 20 years to go from the patent for the first underpinnings of applications for phones other than communication in the 1970s to Simon Personal Communicator in the early 90s, and then another 10-15 years for the first smart phones to emerge. If people gave up because it "had been tried before", we wouldn't have any of the technology we had (in fact, we would still be planting crops with wooden sticks because Thog got trampled trying to chase some wildebeest off of his early attempts at farming).