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film and developing, phone providers began to sell phones cheaply.
In return, the buyer agreed to a service contract lasting for a period
such as two years. Today the same sort of plan makes it possible
to buy a smartphone with a stand-alone price of $600 for only $200
up front. The remaining $400 is folded into the monthly service pay-
ments.
Cell phones were not the only portable devices that were be-
coming popular in the latter part of the century. People have always
enjoyed the idea of having devices they could carry around with
them and use anywhere. In the 1950s transistor radios provided
music at the beach or at a picnic. Later came small cassette re-
corders. In the 1980s the Sony Walkman was a big hit. One could
pop in a cassette and listen to the music on personally assembled
mix tapes while jogging. By the 1990s the music had migrated to
CDs and digital MP3 files, even as the devices continued to shrink
in size. In 2001 Apple introduced the iPod. The iPod was not the
first digital music player, but its clear display and easy to use click
wheel menus made it easy to create playlists and control the play-
back and volume. In 2003 Apple added iTunes, an online store
that made it easy to buy and download music tracks.
Meanwhile, laptop computers became popular in the 1990s
and gradually became lighter and more powerful. However, while
a laptop was portable, it could not be pulled out of a pocket and
used to look up an address or make a quick note. During these
same years a new kind of small, portable device called the PDA
(personal digital assistant, or personal data assistant) became
popular. A PDA made it possible to manage one’s calendar, ap-
pointments, contacts, and notes while accessing e-mail and
browsing the Web to a limited extent. By the end of the decade
PDAs from Palm and BlackBerry became familiar accessories for
many businesspeople.
Birth of the Smartphone
One big problem with these personal organizer devices was that
they could not be used to make phone calls. A phone number
could be looked up in the PDA’s address book, but then the user
would have to take out a separate cell phone to make the call.
