{"id":53,"date":"2025-07-05T20:54:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T20:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odinsmartphone.com\/?p=53"},"modified":"2025-07-12T22:19:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T22:19:13","slug":"odin-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odinsmartphone.com\/?p=53","title":{"rendered":"Odin Smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Odin Smartphone: A Forgotten First<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the year 2000, long before the iPhone or Android, a pioneering team at Motorola and Psion quietly built the world\u2019s first modern smartphone. Called <strong>Odin<\/strong>, it featured a full-colour touchscreen, mobile apps, email, downloadable content, voice control, and \u2014 for the first time ever \u2014 <strong>Airplane Mode<\/strong>. It even included <strong>location-based services<\/strong>, wireless syncing (<strong>SyncML<\/strong>), and early concepts of cloud computing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s remarkable is not just what Odin could do \u2014 but when it did it. This was <strong>seven years before the iPhone<\/strong>, at a time when most mobile phones were still monochrome and had no internet. The Odin Smartphone changed everything \u2014 but was never released. Until now, its story was lost to history<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/odinsmartphone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/2025-07-12-Odin-Smartphone-Functions.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-81\" style=\"width:561px;height:auto\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Odin Smartphone developed in 2000 pioneered many features later found on the iPhone in 2007, including touchscreen, apps, Airplane Mode, and cloud syncing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">History Forgot the World&#8217;s First Smartphone, but the Notes Survived.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Odin Smartphone in 2000 Vanished Before the World Was Ready.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In 2000, before iPhone, before Android, before app stores and GPS, a team at Psion and Motorola quietly built the future \u2014 and called it the <strong>Odin Smartphone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The first full-screen colour portrait <strong>touchscreen smartphone<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first with <strong>downloadable native apps<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Among the earliest with <strong>location-based services<\/strong>, <strong>internet<\/strong>, and <strong>wireless sync<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first use of the term <strong>Airplane Mode<\/strong>, as recorded by <em>Merriam-Webster<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>All led by one man: <strong>Rob Lowe<\/strong>, Odin\u2019s Engineering Lead &amp; Programme Director<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">This is not a tribute.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a correction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83e\udde0 Designed to Replace Everything<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Phone. PDA. Laptop. Pager. Modem. Game console.<br>Odin fused them all \u2014 in a form factor that looks identical to the smartphones we use today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>But this wasn\u2019t from 2007.<br>This was the year <strong>2000<\/strong>. And it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\uddc2 The Evidence Was Never Lost. Just Unseen.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\ud83d\udcd2 <strong>115 pages of handwritten invention notes<\/strong> now held at <strong>Bletchley Park<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\ud83e\uddfe Verified authorship by <strong>Psion\u2019s Director<\/strong>, and Motorola&#8217;s internal records<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\ud83d\udccd Technology inside Odin licensed to Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and more \u2014 shipping in <strong>over 500 million smartphones<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u270d\ufe0f Not just an idea. A built, tested, scheduled and managed engineering programme<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udc64 \u201cWho Invented the Smartphone?\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Who Started the Smartphone Era?<\/strong><br>Not Apple. Not Google.<br>A Man Named Rob Lowe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Internet Rarely Says Rob Lowe &#8211; now it will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udcf8 Here is Rob delivering the Odin Smartphone Notes to Bletchley Park<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/odinsmartphone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/image-2-485x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-85\" style=\"width:213px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rob Lowe hands over the Odin Smartphone development archive to TNMOC at Bletchley Park, March 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s first modern smartphone. Called Odin, it featured a full-colour touchscreen, mobile apps, email, downloadable content, voice control, and \u2014 for the first time ever \u2014 Airplane Mode. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.3.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Odin Smartphone - Odin Smartphone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/odinsmartphone.com\/?p=53\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Odin Smartphone - Odin Smartphone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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\u2019s first modern smartphone. 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