I had a Casseiopia EM(I think)500. Windows based, and like Geoff, just used it as an e-reader. Back then Microsoft was releasing free .lit books once a week or once a month and they werent bad. I think mine is in a drawer with no batteries. I really need to chuck it. I was going to move to an iPaq, or similar but then suddenly the iPhone appeared, had wifi, etc, so I got that and never looked back. My actual phones in the Casio days were almost invariably Nokia, and the last of those was a Nokia 6131 flip phone.
iPhone didnāt really bring anything ānewā to the market. Wifi, apps, mobile data were all already around, it was just that only business really had access to them due to extreme costs.
What Apple brought was agreements with telcos that provided decent amounts of data which then allowed normal people to use online services (previously most people would have 5mb or there abouts).
Essentially they put smartphones into the hands of average users and encouraged the infrastructure providers to allow them to actually use them!
Actually when I was tethering my early Nokia phone by cable to my laptop back in the early days of Windows XP (at 9600 bps) there were no data limits at all (there were hour limits however).
Some time later when connected devices started to become more common Telstra forced me off that legacy plan (and I wasnāt happy at the time) on to a plan with limits.
They did bring a better user experience to the table, so thereās that.
I notice that a lot of these PDAs look similar in design. Does anyone know who came up with the original design for them? People say how modern smart phones all copy iPhone hardware layouts, but looking at this thread itās clear to see PDAs had the same home-button type design years ago.
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The Palm PDA didnāt have a single centre button, they either had twin buttons or on later versions a rocker button (for up and down).
I didnāt see the āhomeā style button until the Windows Pocket PC devices became common with Windows Pocket PC 2002 (which looked like XP) but there were devices before that running Windows Pocket PC 2000 (which looked like Windows 98). Later OS versions were called Windows Mobile (even though they were primarily intended for PDAs).
These operating systems were developed from Windows CE which was released in 1996 and in fact Windows CE still exists and is still being developed for use with low power embedded devices.
I suspect the first device with a single centre home rocker button with 4 directions (rather than 2 like the Palm PDAs) was the HP Journada 560 which was built before Compaq and HQ amalgamated.
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I had this one
I canāt even remember how the buttons worked. It wasnt a phone though, and it did not have wifi, and its expansion card was a whole 32Mb. (Internal was 16) and I think it was just Windows CE. It had a dinky little dock which connected to the PC via a serial port IIRC.
Now, of course, I have this desperate need to find it, replace the batteries and see if it will still function.
Any love for the Hiptop (Sidekick)? I had the 2 and the 3. Always on, unlimited 2G internet for $30 a month with Telstra. Bargain! Still the best tiny keyboard Iāve ever used.
Is anyone still using any iteration of Newton?
I havenāt powered up my 2000 in about 10 yearsā¦ was just thinking about it today and wondering if they have any practical valueā¦
I canāt express how much I lusted after an iPaq when I was in my early teens.
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The first smart phone I got was the Motorola A1000, running Symbian. It was pretty cool at the time, had IM+ running on it and a few other things.
A couple of years later I was given a Dell Axim X50 from our Dell account manager. It was great for Bejeweled. I hated Windows Mobile though.
I remember having a HP iPaq rx3417 which ended up being an in-car GPS using an external bluetooth GPS dongle and Navman software. I also remember strapping the whole box and dive to a Nitro powered Monster truck (RC that is, Revo 3.3) so I could measure its speed 
!
The iPaq was upgraded to a O2 XDA II Mini:
https://www.gsmarena.com/o2_xda_ii_mini-944.php
As I mentioned earlier, while it was internet connected the data plans were so ridiculously low (and expensive) that I was manually syncing stuff to it and only really using it on WiFi (which was still a pretty new concept in 2004/05).
I quite liked Windows Mobile and used lots of different custom ROMs from XDA developers on various units over the years before finally going iPhone in '08 after playing with my Wifes iPhone 3G. I really do think that half the decision was the availability of data on the iPhone plans.
I used my Cassiopeia EM500 (with a 32MB mmc card!!) from 2000 to 2002 for reading ebooks on nights.
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I forgot about my Cassiopeia! I had an A-11 (or at least one that looked like this) in the late 90ās. I remember having a PCMCIA storage card for 8MB or something like that of additional memory!
