# Mobile Computing

Canonical URL: https://shipslides.com/d/technology-mobile-computing
Raw viewer URL: https://content.shipslides.com/d/technology-mobile-computing/raw
Category: Technology
Slides: 16
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:49:48.271Z
Tags: technology, mobile, computing

## Summary

Forty years of pocketable computers. From the Apple Newton's misread ink to a foldable device with a six-billion-parameter on-device model. Sixteen pages. Key sections include: Mobile Computing.; Pocket computing precursors.; Newton MessagePad.; Jeff Hawkins's Palm.; Push email and the executive thumb.; "An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator."; Android.; What changed.; The SoC.; Generations..

## Slide Outline

1. Mobile Computing.
2. Pocket computing precursors.
3. Newton MessagePad.
4. Jeff Hawkins's Palm.
5. Push email and the executive thumb.
6. "An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator."
7. Android.
8. What changed.
9. The SoC.
10. Generations.
11. The App Store economy.
12. What's next?

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: Swiss Grid Edition

- 01 / 16
- Deck 09 / Mobile ComputingVol. II · 2026
- Mobile
- Computing.
- Forty years of pocketable computers. From the Apple Newton's misread ink to a foldable device with a six-billion-parameter on-device model. Sixteen pages.

### Slide 2: Slide 2

- 02 / 16
- IndexSections
- Cover
- Pre-history
- Newton
- Palm
- BlackBerry
- iPhone
- Android
- Specs
- SoC
- Network
- Apps
- Diagram
- Watch
- Glossary
- Future

### Slide 3: Before the smartphone

- 03 / 16
- 1973–1992Prehistory
- Pocket computing precursors.
- Martin Cooper places the first handheld cellular call in New York on April 3, 1973, on a Motorola DynaTAC prototype. The IBM Simon (1994) is widely cited as the first smart phone — touchscreen, email, calendar, fax, $899 retail.
- HP-65 (1974) — first programmable handheld; Psion Organiser (1984) — first true PDA; Atari Portfolio (1989) — DOS in your hand.
- Tally
- Cellular subscribers, worldwide:
- YearSubs (million)
- 199011
- 2000740
- 20105,400
- 20208,300
- 20258,900

### Slide 4: Newton MessagePad.

- 04 / 16
- 1993Apple Newton MessagePad
- Launched August 1993. ARM 610 at 20 MHz, 640 KB RAM, 4 MB ROM. NewtonOS introduced "soup" object storage and the famously-mocked handwriting recognizer. Discontinued by Steve Jobs on his return in 1998.
- Legacy: ARM was a Newton co-investment (Apple, Acorn, VLSI, 1990) and would go on to power every modern smartphone.
- Spec card
- CPUARM 610 @ 20 MHz
- RAM640 KB
- StoragePCMCIA
- Screen336×240 mono
- Price$699 USD

### Slide 5: Lessons from a wood block

- 05 / 16
- 1996Palm Pilot
- Jeff Hawkins's Palm.
- Hawkins carried a wooden block in his pocket for weeks, "tapping it" with a stylus, before specifying the Palm Pilot's dimensions. Released March 1996. Graffiti unistroke recognition, four buttons, clip-on cradle for HotSync.
- Why Palm worked
- Did one thing well — sync a calendar & contacts to the desktop.
- Cheap ($299).
- HotSync was reliable.
- Treo (2002) was the first widely successful smartphone-PDA hybrid.

### Slide 6: Crackberry

- 06 / 16
- 1999–2008BlackBerry
- Push email and the executive thumb.
- Research In Motion's 850 (1999) and 957 (2000) introduced reliable two-way push email over Mobitex. The 7230 (2003) added a color screen; the 8700 (2005) introduced QWERTY that the world had to acknowledge. By 2008, BlackBerry had ~50% of the U.S. smartphone market.

### Slide 7: "An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator."

- 07 / 16
- January 9, 2007iPhone
- Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007. 3.5" 320×480 capacitive touchscreen, no stylus, full WebKit browser, multi-touch pinch and zoom. ARM11 412 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 4/8/16 GB flash. EDGE-only on launch (3G arrived in 2008).
- The App Store launched July 2008 with 500 apps; by 2026 there are over 2 million.
- Inflection
- The smartphone went from a niche enterprise tool to the dominant computing device on Earth in roughly seven years.

### Slide 8: Android.

- 08 / 16
- September 23, 2008Android & OHA
- Andy Rubin's Android Inc. acquired by Google in July 2005. Android 1.0 shipped on the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) in October 2008 — physical keyboard, trackball, 3.2" screen. Open Handset Alliance, AOSP, an open Linux kernel + Apache-licensed user space. Today: ~70% of smartphones globally.
- Architecture
- +----------------------------+
- | Apps (Java/Kotlin) |
- +----------------------------+
- | Application Framework |
- +----------------------------+
- | ART runtime · libraries |
- +----------------------------+
- | HAL |
- +----------------------------+
- | Linux kernel |
- +----------------------------+

### Slide 9: What changed.

- 09 / 16
- 20 yearsHow specs moved
- YearFlagshipCPURAMCell
- 2003Nokia 6600ARM9 104 MHz6 MB2.5G GPRS
- 2007iPhoneARM11 412 MHz128 MB2.75G EDGE
- 2010iPhone 4A4 1 GHz512 MB3G HSPA
- 2014iPhone 6A8 dual 1.4 GHz1 GB4G LTE
- 2020iPhone 12A14 6-core4 GB5G NR
- 2025iPhone 17 ProA19 Pro 6-core12 GB5G SA, mmWave

### Slide 10: The SoC.

- 10 / 16
- System-on-a-ChipThe mobile silicon era
- Apple's A4 (2010) was the first Apple-designed mobile SoC. By A11 (2017) it included a Neural Engine; by A17 Pro (2023) it was 3 nm. Qualcomm Snapdragon, MediaTek Dimensity, Samsung Exynos, and Google Tensor compete in the Android ecosystem.
- Modern mobile SoCs integrate: CPU clusters (P + E cores), GPU, ISP, NPU, DSP, secure enclave, modem, codec blocks. The "phone" is mostly a battery, a screen, and an antenna stack around an SoC.
- Block diagram

### Slide 11: Generations.

- 11 / 16
- Air interface1G → 5G
- GenYearTechNotable
- 1G1979 / '83NTT, AMPS analogVoice only
- 2G1991GSM (TDMA), CDMA (IS-95)SMS, GPRS, EDGE
- 3G2001UMTS / W-CDMA~2 Mb/s, mobile data viable
- 4G2009LTE (OFDMA)~100 Mb/s, all-IP
- 5G2019NR, mmWave~1 Gb/s, ultra-low latency
- 6G~2030sub-THz, AI-nativeStandardization underway

### Slide 12: The App Store economy.

- 12 / 16
- App storesDistribution
- Apple's App Store opened July 10, 2008; Google's Android Market (later Play) launched October 2008. By 2024 the global app economy was estimated at over $500B in consumer spend. The 2024 EU Digital Markets Act forced Apple to allow alternative iOS app marketplaces in Europe — the first major change to the iOS distribution model since 2008.

### Slide 13: Slide 13

- 13 / 16
- Stack diagramHow a tap reaches a server

### Slide 14: Reading

- 14 / 16
- Watch thisRecommended
- 2007 Macworld keynote.
- Andy Hertzfeld, Folklore.org.
- BlackBerry rise & fall — Losing the Signal, McNish & Silcoff.
- Watch: android history

### Slide 15: Slide 15

- 15 / 16
- GlossaryDefinitions
- TermMeaning
- SoCSystem-on-a-chip; many computer subsystems on one die.
- HALHardware abstraction layer; in Android, the bridge between framework and drivers.
- SIM / eSIMSubscriber Identity Module; eSIM is provisioned electronically.
- NPUNeural processing unit; on-device AI accelerator.
- OTAOver-the-air update — the standard since iOS 5 (2011).
- VoLTEVoice over LTE; voice calls as IP traffic.

### Slide 16: What's next?

- 16 / 16
- Open problemsPost-smartphone
- On-device foundation models & private inference.
- Wearable/glasses form factor (Meta Ray-Ban, Apple Vision, etc.).
- Foldables and rollables (Galaxy Z Fold, Huawei Mate XT trifold).
- Direct-to-cell satellite (Starlink Direct, AST SpaceMobile).
- Repairability & right-to-repair regulation.
- One number
- 7.2B
- active smartphone subscriptions worldwide, 2025 (Ericsson).
- ~5h
- average daily smartphone use among adults, U.S. (data.ai 2024).
- ← Master catalog
- Technology index
- Top ↑


## Related Decks

- [Quantum Computing](https://shipslides.com/d/technology-quantum-computing)
- [AI & Machine Learning](https://shipslides.com/d/technology-ai-and-ml)
- [Artificial Intelligence: From Turing to Transformers](https://shipslides.com/d/technology-artificial-intelligence)
- [Biotechnology](https://shipslides.com/d/technology-biotech)