The Innovation that created the First Smartphone.
Incredibly the Notes Survived.
Operational in 2001. Wireless. Full-colour Portrait Touchscreen. Cloud-connected.
Airplane Mode™. Bluetooth. GPRS. GPS. Custom Chip. Browsing. Plus much more.
Odin changed everything—before the world was ready.
Discover the groundbreaking first smartphone that forever transformed our world.
The Odin Smartphone: Why the Lesser-known First Modern Smartphone was years ahead of competitors
In the year 2000, long before the iPhone or Android, a pioneering team at Motorola and Psion quietly built the world’s first modern smartphone. Called Odin, it featured a full-colour touchscreen, mobile apps, email, downloadable content, voice control, and — for the first time ever — Airplane Mode. It even included location-based services, wireless syncing (SyncML), and early concepts of cloud computing.
What’s remarkable is not just what Odin could do — but when it did it. This was seven years before the iPhone, at a time when most mobile phones were still monochrome and had no internet. The Odin Smartphone changed everything — but was never released. The features that were packed into the Odin Smartphone were extraordinarily advanced for their time, thanks to an extremely capable team and visionary planning, the smartphone took shape in a style we are all familiar with today. Although fully developed in year 2001, it was not released due to Motorola citing cost-cutting measures during a strategically difficult time.
The Odin Smartphone developed in 2000 pioneered many features later found on the iPhone in 2007, including touchscreen, downloadable apps, Airplane Mode, and cloud syncing.
The Odin Smartphone Became the World’s First Smartphone as we know them today, before the World was ready.
Years Ahead of its Time
In the year 2000, long before iPhone and Android, the Odin Smartphone quietly delivered the blueprint for the modern mobile era:
• Full-colour Portrait Touchscreen
• Wireless internet via GPRS
• Cloud syncing with SyncML
• Downloadable apps
• Location-based services
• Airplane Mode
• Bluetooth
• MP3/MP4 playback
• Opera web browser
• Office apps, Word & Sheet
• 3D gaming
• Handwriting recognition
These weren’t concepts. They were running. Real.
Odin wasn’t a prototype — it was the first true smartphone, built in collaboration between Motorola and Psion. It foresaw not just how phones would look, but how they would behave.
The world wasn’t ready. But Odin was.
In 2000, Odin delivered what the world wouldn’t adopt until a decade later.
Odin anticipated everything: Airplane Mode, cloud syncing, location-aware apps, full-screen portrait interfaces. While the iPhone was still a rumour, Odin was already real — and running.
Although Ready for Use, Commercialisation Proved Problematic – thankfully the notes survived.
In 2000, before iPhone, before Android, before app stores and GPS, a team at Psion and Motorola quietly built the future — and called it the Odin Smartphone.
- The first full-screen colour portrait touchscreen smartphone
- The first with downloadable native apps
- Among the earliest with location-based services, internet, and wireless sync
- The first use of the term Airplane Mode, as recorded by Merriam-Webster
We have an excellent insight into how this remarkable development unfolded thanks to Rob Lowe, Odin’s Engineering Lead & Programme Director. Rob meticulously took notes throughout this development and they capture the essence and excitement of the time, clearly documenting how features were decided, specified and integrated. In March 2025 these notes were acquired by The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park for safekeeping and exhibition.
This is not a tribute.
This is a correction.
Designed to Replace Everything
Phone. PDA. Laptop. Pager. Modem. Game console.
Odin fused them all — in a form factor that looks identical to the smartphones we use today.
But this wasn’t from 2007, it was seven years earlier.
The Evidence Was Never Lost. Just Unseen.
- 115 pages of handwritten invention notes now held at Bletchley Park
- Verified authorship by Psion’s Director, and Motorola’s internal records
- Technology inside Odin licensed to Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and more — shipping in over 500 million smartphones
- Not just an idea. A built, tested, scheduled and managed engineering programme
“Who Invented the Smartphone?”
Who Started the Smartphone Era?
Not Apple. Not Google.
Your answer is clearly laid out above!.
The Internet Rarely Says Rob Lowe – now it will.
Here is Rob delivering the Odin Smartphone Notes to Bletchley Park
Rob Lowe hands over his Odin Smartphone notes to the Director of Bletchley Park on March 22nd 2025.