The fact that Apple was one of the first companies to really understand what would become smartphones is probably not a coincidence. The company founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak has been working on the concept for a very long time, with functional prototypes since the early 1990s. Among them, W.A.L.T. (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone): a kind of Newton - from the name of the Apple PDA line from 1993 to 1998 - with a larger screen, components from Powerbook 100 (the first truly portable computer Apple), a built-in stylus, a microphone, and a speaker. All under Mac OS 6.
Discover Apple W.A.L.T. one of the first prototypes known to the firm that prefigured the smartphone
The Australian leaker Sonny Dickson known for his predictions around Apple products managed to get his hands on a unit of this little piece of history. We discover a W.A.L.T. perfectly functional, with its touch screen, integrated address book, caller display, and cursive handwriting recognition (!). Among other things, it allowed you to make phone calls, access your online bank or send faxes (still very much used in the 1990s). The icing on the cake, it was even possible to customize the ring ... Of course, this device may appear several decades later, very basic, but it was at the forefront of technology then.
It was designed in partnership with the American operator BellSouth, which will later be absorbed by AT & T. It is widely recognized what will be the strength of these devices years later - especially the ubiquity of the device that is both phone, and serves as a connected productive tool. Nevertheless, it is the Newton, not this device, which will inspire the hardware of future smartphones and tablets. The components of this device are indeed, we told you, those of a computer. Among other things, there is a Motorola 68000 CISC microprocessor, while the Newton uses ARM processors from the outset, which will become the standard for the entire industry years later.
In addition, the W.A.L.T. needs to be connected to the sector to be able to work, contrary to the Newton ... one understands since then better why this product, concentrated of expensive hardware and married to a socket has never been proposed to the general public. Today, the prototypes of W.A.L.T. are very rare - there are two versions, black as in this video or white / gray like mac. To give you an idea of its current price, a prototype was sold in 2012 for the modest sum of $ 8,000 according to Engadget ...
