IBM Simon | Hacker News Reader

IBM Simon

en.wikipedia.org

47 pointsrbanffy17 comments

I was sent one of these by a reader who also sent me a couple of EO Personal Communicators (which I wrote about for Input a couple of years ago: https://www.inputmag.com/features/fax-on-the-beach-the-story...).

None of these devices worked, though there were a few in the box that did, most notably two still-functional Apple Newtons. I especially had little luck with the IBM Simon. The batteries simply did not want to charge and from what I read the charging process on them was supposedly quite involved even when the gadgets were new. If anyone has any ideas on how to get the device to connect to some source of power I’m happy to give it another shot, however.

Just to offer some context as to why the phone is so hard to charge, here is a manual for the Simon as preserved, ironically, by a Microsoft employee: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Simon%20Use...

The relevant passage:

> It needs to charge for 14-16 hours to condition the battery. this applies only to a battery's first charge. It takes about 90 minutes to recharge a battery.) You will see a flashing amber light for about two seconds and then a solid amber light (marked with the number 2) indicating the battery is charging. If the amber light keeps flashing and you know your battery is hot or cold, just wait. Otherwise, try taking it out and putting it back in. If the light doesn't stop flashing, contact your service representative.

So, brand new, you had to charge this phone for more than half a day just to calibrate the battery.

I tried doing the charge on the battery for more than a day using the charger I was also given, to little effect.

I remember thinking in the 90s that being able to use irc on a portable wireless device (pre wifi) would the most cyberpunk cool future I could imagine. A roommate had a palm pilot, and co-workers were already developing that weird stylus dislexia where they couldn't write cursive again after using the Palm pad scheme. Between slack and signal groups on my phone(s) today, I'd say the future is annoying. There was just no way of knowing then that the hidden desire of the long tail of people in the world was that each of them needed a way to share pictures of their butt, where previously you needed both a photocopier and a fax machine, and the fax numbers of people you wanted to send it to, where now, we have instagram. Everybody can fax literally everybody. We thought this would be paradise.

> I remember thinking in the 90s that being able to use irc on a portable wireless device (pre wifi) would the most cyberpunk cool future I could imagine.

There was this Australian tv show for kids in the 90s in which prop department turned one of Sharp PDAs [1] into futuristic multipurpose smartphone-alike device with built-in camera that allowed (from show PoV) live video conversations, conferences across the globe via a single abandoned satellite. Back then the idea was amazing and I did wonder if we ever get such gizmos in real life. Some 30 years later we can indeed have video calls with our smartphones and where the other person is around the world it really doesn't matter. The other factors do matter like the platform - can you reach someone only via Watsapp or Telegram or maybe Skype? Do we use Discord or Zoom, or perhaps Jitsi?

[1] - http://blog.compuseum.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/P1300578...

> There was just no way of knowing then that the hidden desire of the long tail of people in the world was that each of them needed a way to share pictures of their butt, where previously you needed both a photocopier and a fax machine, and the fax numbers of people you wanted to send it to, where now, we have instagram. Everybody can fax literally everybody. We thought this would be paradise.

Jesus Christ, these three sentences deserve an award.

Hah, thank you! I have certainly savoured that compliment. Cheers.

This reminds me of the Verizon One Home Phone[1] which didn't have many applications to justify it being smart but was smart for smart's sake. Breaking beyond that barrier and aligning a product, in a customer's mind, with a problem it solves is a key starting point (IMO) for someone who wants to justify the cost of a first adopter product.

I think it is interesting they branded the Simon as "the first personal digital assistant or PDA to include telephony features" rather than the telephone with PDA features. I think this is a key distinction in marketing that can go overlooked - everyone has a household telephone but a PDA was more of a niche product. Its easier to wrap your head around "I have one of these and it does more!" instead of the other way "I don't have a PDA so why would I need one that makes calls? I already have a phone!"

[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2007-01-08-the-next-verizon-one-net...

The multi-touch screen and good quality software¹ of the iPhone are what really drew a line in the sand between the old and new "smart" phone worlds.

Prior to the iPhone I think the closest device to hold a candle to it was the "VisorPhone" (palm clone with an add-on telephony device).

https://web.archive.org/web/20010107042900/http://www.handsp...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Handspring_Prism_Vis...

Close but no cigar - even if the hardware had been a little more integrated they would probably never have pulled off the deal with the telcos that Apple finessed.

¹ - relative to most phone software, whose UI beyond basic telephony was remarkably dire

Absolutely - the impact of the multi-touch screen and 'touch-not-stylus' design really cannot be understated.

I think people sometimes forget that there were lots of phones with giant touchscreens before the iPhone - but the problem was that they just weren't very good. Windows Mobile 6 dominated the world, and if they managed to get a capacitive screen and put a sensible UI on it that was actually responsive the marketplace might be very different today!

I think you might have wanted to say "cannot be OVERstated" meaning so important that even if you tried to hype it to the max you wouldn't be wrong.

Capacitive displays were new, I think, but there was a bias against them at Nokia since you could not operate such screens with gloves on. In a cold country like Finland that was seen as a negative which is why resistive displays were preferred. Oddly though, I almost never use multitouch now - only for photos.

Pinch-to-zoom was a very visible feature easily demonstrated on photos. Then it was an absolute necessity on websites purely designed for desktop.

I hadn't reflected on it before, and it makes sense now everyone targets mobile first, but it is a little surprising how rarely I need it these days.

Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29

I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw

I actually don't think you can say that Apple was first in any single way.

We had fullscreen touch smartphones in 2003 long before the iPhone (i had a HTC magician which i thought was pretty good at the time).

We had fullscreen touch smartphones with capacitative touchscreens. LG KE850 Prada.

The honest truth is that Apple had a strong brand it was able to pivot into with the iPod which was considered a must have device at the time.

Calling the VisorPhone a Plan clone is really doing a disservice to the company behind it. Their history is fairly intertwined with the history of Palm itself.

Featured in the opening of this episode of PBS’s “the Computer Chronicles” on mobile computing from 1995: https://youtu.be/S8Mgc8dYLr0

Samsung had a great touchscreen phone too in the late 1990s. I can't find it or recall the same of it. The phone was similar to the IBM Simon only it was silver with a green monochrome screen. I think it had a PDA and MP3 capabilities which at the time was new. It could be the SPH-M100 but it doesn't look like I remember the screen should be longer like on the Simon.

I was going to get one but I had read it had battery problems and it was very expensive and I had no need for it.

I guess its phone programm was very good. To really qualify as a smartfone you need a buggy and unreliable phone programm and a buggy and unreliable messages programm. And some games.

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