Comment by Gravityloss

2 days ago

http://twitpic.com/btc934 "Taskuterminaali 2002", the concept is from 1996 envisioning what would be released in 2002.

I guess the technology components were not yet on that level by then.

SGI Irix was ahead of its time, and so were the Nokia Communicator.

Battery quality/video quality wasn't up to par for mobile devices. Some DVB-T smartphones were released. Also, WWW wasn't made for touchscreen (where capacitive touch requires more modification than resistive).

I'd say on the Linux-side, Maemo and the internet tablet (NIT) were ahead of their time, still limited given power efficiency, but better than Intel.