Early adopter

These days, it seems that everyone has a smartphone.  I recently read that 37% of the cell phone market consists of smartphones today, and that it is now a more popular personal computing device than the computer itself.  It hasn't been that long ago that I could flip up the antenna on my Palm VII, connect to the Internet, and impress every other geek in the room.  Clair Lindquist, our Information Technology manager, has a knack for recognizing and preserving future collectibles.  He is the keeper of the stack of now-obsolete smartphones, which someone in a future generation may appreciate as much as the typewriter.

Clair's collection includes that Palm VII (technically not a phone, but a wireless Internet device), a Kyocera 7035, an HTC, and a Samsung Omnia, all of which rode in my pocket or clipped to my belt.  There is at least one missing from the pile: the orginal Motorola Droid.  I think my smart phone habit dates to about 1999, but I was using handheld devices considerably earlier.