The video embedded below appeared recently on popular YouTube channel DankPods, highlighting the Nokia 9000, the very first Communicator, with a chunky exterior that belay a full Internet (such as it was) computer and many of the 'smarts' that we'd recognise today. It's a good and fun watch, if a little 'jokey', but that this was a real product 11 years before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone should get a few jaws dropping. 

I'd go further, of course, and suggest that you can go back five years further, to 1991 (i.e. 30 years ago!!), to the clamshell Psion palmtops with full multi-tasking operating systems, to see the genesis of the modern smartphone. I should know, I was there, writing about the Psions, programming them, and running the Psion shareware library.

But yes, put the pre-emptive multi-tasking of the Psions together with Nokia's expertise in making these clamshell Communicators, and you end up with what many people think of as the 'classic' Communicator, the 9210, released in 2000, providing a genuinely full Internet experience in full colour and with third party applications - again, seven years before the iPhone.

Still, you can enjoy the Nokia 9000 video below:

Good stuff, and always inspiring to realise what Psion, Nokia, and others were doing in the decade before 'smartphones' became mainstream.