10 Most Important Handheld Devices of All Time

10 IBM DiskOnKey (2000)

Goodbye, floppy. Adios, Zip Drive! IBM’s first flash drive model featured just 8MB of storage, which was several times the capacity of a floppy. And it fit in our pockets.

9 WALKMAN TPS-L2 (1979)

The boombox era officially died when Sony released the Walkman, which sported a metal case and not one, but two minijacks. Its cone of silence also enabled countless movie and TV murders in the early ’80s.

8 Palm VII (1999)

This was the first truly wireless data/ communication device, with a connection powered by a wireless antenna, the Mobitex network, and the $14.95 per month Palm.net service. We still have ours.

7 Canon 5D Mark II (2008)

Factor in a hot new image processor (DIGIC 4), a big, bright 21-megapixel sensor, and 1080p video capabilities so sophisticated that it was used to film an episode of TV’s House, and you quite simply have one of the finest cameras ever produced.

6 iPad (2010)

Regardless of your thoughts about Apple, it’s clear that the iPad is a bold, popular step into uncharted waters. It borrows from everything, but also projects a unique flavor that’s caused a hell of an industry stir. There have always been a ton of “me too” devices in the consumer tech marketplace—this isn’t one of them.

5 Harmony Remote Control (2001)

Zenith’s Space Command may be the forefather of living-room remotes, but Harmony’s initial series of universal remotes was an evolutionary leap. Even the very first model delivered Internet connectivity—further proof of a product that was more than slightly ahead of its time.

4 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS ‘CAL TECH’ (1967)

Invented by engineers who were still trying to find a home for the integrated circuit, the first handheld calculator known to man never surpassed the prototype stage and handled just the basics. “Cal Tech” was the foundation for the Canon Pocketronic and bazillions of handheld calculators afterwards.

3 iPhone 3G (2008)

The reason we’ve included the 3G version of the iPhone in this list has just as much to do with the concept that simultaneously debuted with it: the App Store, where boundaries are seemingly limited only by our imagination. Seven billion downloaded applications to date? Wow.

2 Amazon Kindle (2007)

The Kindle is so ubiquitous, and its impact on society so pronounced, that we can’t believe it’s only been commercially available for three years.

1 Abacus (600 B.C.)

Long before the smartphone or the laptop or the calculator—or the mechanical clock or even paper— there existed a handheld device that kept tabs on virtually anything involving numbers. That it’s still in use today in various parts of the world, some 2000- plus years later, drives home its importance.