The Odin Smartphone – Years Ahead of its Time
The Odin Smartphone: A Forgotten First
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-color 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. Until now, its story was lost to history.
