Comment by Fnoord

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.