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Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone (Full Documentary)

The Verge · 1.7M views · 2021-12-07 · 30:36

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Overview

The Verge's documentary on Handspring and its Treo, a smartphone that came a decade before the iPhone. It tells how a small team tried to build the modern smartphone and was held back by carriers and timing.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as an interview-rich history of Handspring, Palm OS and why telcos hurt early smartphones.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2025

Topics

Tech company stories & documentariesConsumer devices & gadgetsHistory of computing
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handspringtreopalm ossmartphone historythe verge

What people said

pushedx · 2024-04 · Recommendation

Right, it was ex-Palm employees at Handspring that created the Treo. Nice documentary about this with interviews: [VIDEO]

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throwaway74354 · 2024-04 · Recommendation

Handspring documentary by the Verge had an interesting perspective on the matter: [VIDEO] (I'm bad at cropping YouTube videos. The part in question is [12:53 - 14:30])

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roywiggins · 2022-02 · Recommendation

Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place. [LINK] I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by The Verge, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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