PCMCIA in the context of "IBM Simon"

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👉 PCMCIA in the context of IBM Simon

The IBM Simon Personal Communicator (simply known as IBM Simon) is a cellular phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) designed by International Business Machines (IBM), released in 1994. Built on an x86 processor, the IBM Simon features a 4.5 inch resistive touchscreen display and runs an MS-DOS-compatible operating system with the ability to install additional software using its PCMCIA slot, The Simon also has a modem for faxing and email and was also the first PDA to include telephony features (make phone calls) through cellular; due to these features and capabilities, it has retrospectively been referred to as the first true smartphone.

The device was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric. BellSouth Cellular Corp. distributed the IBM Simon in the United States between August 1994 and February 1995 for use on its analog AMPS network, selling 50,000 units. Sales were hampered by its high price (over $2,100 in 2021 adjusted for inflation) and a short battery life lasting only an hour. IBM worked on a smaller successor model, codenamed Neon, but it was abandoned during development and not released.

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PCMCIA in the context of PC Card

PC Card is a technical standard specifying an expansion card interface for laptops and PDAs. The PCMCIA originally introduced the 16-bit ISA-based PCMCIA Card in 1990, but renamed it to PC Card in March 1995 to avoid confusion with the name of the organization. The CardBus PC Card was introduced as a 32-bit version of the original PC Card, based on the PCI specification. CardBus slots are backward compatible, but older slots are not forward compatible with CardBus cards.

Although originally designed as a standard for memory-expansion cards for computer storage, the existence of a usable general standard for notebook peripherals led to the development of many kinds of devices including network cards, modems, and hard disks.

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