Gadgetory

hey guys it's seven blasts from pocketnow.com here with my very first video for the site today I thought we'd take a dip in a hot tub time machine and venture all the way back to 1999 when cellphone plans still cost a thousand dollars for a hundred square feet of coverage and Verizon was still just a weird word sharing space with singular in the imaginary dictionary what you see in front of you is not an actual cell phone though it does feature many of the same characteristics as your modern wireless handset notice the large touchscreen and graceful curves around the periphery take note of the icon filled home screen representing just a few of the thousands of applications available through Third Point through third-party unregulated app stores as you probably guessed by now or read on the device itself this is a model VX from the palm corporation formally known as palm one and now better known as a tiny subsidiary of computing and information services giant hewlett-packard for those younger viewers in the audience it's probably easiest to think about this gadget as a smart phone without the phone people in the late 20th century referred to it as a personal digital assistant which is sort of funny because this assistant couldn't even check your email for you or could it actually with the addition of this handy though far from compact attachable sled the 20 megahertz VX could transform into one of the earliest wireless data data devices that's right even with its 160 by 160 grayscale screen and eight megabytes of memory the VX could slide into Nova tells minstrel modem for downloading email and even rudimentary web browsing obviously its functionality was severely limited by the relatively small wireless coverage footprints back then but those who could find a signal were golden this made the two-way pager look absolutely archaic in comparison unfortunately the minstrel won't hook up to any modern cellular providers meaning we can't actually run any internet-enabled programs although I can tell you that a bandwidth speed test would not yield very impressive results the same could be said of palms next attempt at a wireless PDA the seven or VIII which embedded the modem directly into the book to the device but sacrificed aesthetics in a return to the boxy palm 3 styling well that's all the retro fun we have for you today good viewers but please tune in next time as we take a look back at some of the devices which have shut which have helped shape both our lives and the gadgets in our lives thank you for tuning in