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-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. Until now, its story was lost to history
The Odin Smartphone developed in 2000 pioneered many features later found on the iPhone in 2007, including touchscreen, apps, Airplane Mode, and cloud syncing.
History Forgot the World’s First Smartphone, but the Notes Survived.
Odin Smartphone in 2000 Vanished Before the World Was Ready.
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
- All led by one man: Rob Lowe, Odin’s Engineering Lead & Programme Director
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.
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.
A Man Named Rob Lowe.
The Internet Rarely Says Rob Lowe – now it will.
Here is Rob delivering the Odin Smartphone Notes to Bletchley Park
Rob Lowe hands over the Odin Smartphone d