> Apple: First "smart phone" but not the first personal computer
Was it the first smartphone? I would call phones like the Palm Treo and later BlackBerries smartphones. There were even apps, but everything was lot more locked down and a lot more expensive.
> I would call phones like the Palm Treo and later BlackBerries smartphones.
It's not just you; at the time these products were available, _everyone_ called them smartphones. Emphatically, Apple did not bring the first smartphone to market, not even close. They were, however, the first to popularize it beyond the field of nerds into the general public.
> There were even apps, but everything was lot more locked down and a lot more expensive.
And just plain... bad. The entire experience didn't have that "feel" that Apple turned into reality. It's comparable to today's AI landscape—the technology is pretty neat, but using it is a complete slog.
I actually have pretty fond memories of PalmOS PDAs. The hardware was very nice, but they were held back by the resistive touchscreen and dependence on a stylus for input. I never used a Treo but it felt like this was Palm trying to copy BlackBerry by adding a physical keyboard.
Edit: There were also the limitations of that era that held devices back in general. WAP internet[1] was awful, but most mobile services were too slow for much else.
In general, they were not. You're probably thinking of the very niche and unsuccessful Maemo/MeeGo project - eg Nokia N900 - that were indeed Linux-based. But everything else smartphone-ish from Nokia before Lumia (Windows Phone) were Symbian, which predates Linux and has nothing to do with it.
Was it the first smartphone? I would call phones like the Palm Treo and later BlackBerries smartphones. There were even apps, but everything was lot more locked down and a lot more expensive.