Communication · 2007

Smartphone

A touchscreen computer in every pocket puts the whole internet within reach of billions.

Earlier devices like the IBM Simon (1994) and BlackBerry existed, but Apple's iPhone of June 2007 and Android in 2008 made the full web and app ecosystems mainstream. By the mid-2020s over 4 billion people used smartphones, often as their only computer.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 6

Lithium-ion battery 1991
World Wide Web 1991
Flash memory 1987
ARM architecture 1985
Cellular phone network 1983
Microprocessor (Intel 4004) 1971

What it led to 10

Gorilla Glass 2007
App Store 2008
4G LTE 2009
Smartphone SoC (Apple A4) 2010
Siri 2011
Consumer quadcopter 2013
End-to-end encrypted messaging 2013
Algorithmic short video (TikTok) 2016
Universal real-time translation ~2028
Satellite broadband to every phone ~2029

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people Latest: 112 per 100 people (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Share of people online Latest: 73.6 % (2025) Source: Our World in Data