Hipsters rejoice as world's first ever smartphone heads to new London Science Museum exhibition: It's 20 years old

The world's oldest smartphone will be put on display to the public later this year, at London's Science 

Museum.

IBM Simon, a 200 x 64 x 38mm, 510g beast, first hit the shelves back on 16 August 1994 – a full 20 years 

ago (when I was not yet steady on my feet).

Some of the phone's functionality might surprise you. Simon featured a 4.5 x 1.4in touch-sensitive LCD 

display, which you could use with a stylus for note-taking and general keyboard capabilities.

It could also run a selection of apps, send and receive faxes and emails, manage contacts and display a 

personal calendar. Somewhat astonishingly, it also supported PredictaKey, a sort of nineties equivalent of 

SwiftKey.

Unfortunately, aside from the fact that the phone was huge, its battery only lasted about an hour and it 

featured a paltry 1MB of storage and RAM. Hardware specialists, pat yourselves on the backs. 

The handset initially cost between $899 (£540) and $1,099 (£660), but this price tag was later reduced to 

$599 (£360). At least some things haven't changed, eh.

Despite the fact that Simon was only available for purchase for half a year, it is believed that IBM managed to flog a staggering 50,000 units.

I'm sure IBM would fancy its chances for achieving even larger sales figures now, what with the rise of the hipster generation and its abhorrent obsession with "bringing back" outdated products and trends.

The "Information Age" exhibition at the Science Museum, starting on 25 October, will showcase a number of devices and technologies which have never yet been publicly displayed.