Back in the year 2000, I moved to Japan. All we did was text. It was easy and didn't cost anything extra. I could also get some internet access to news services and games like poker on a Sanyo phone. Blackberries weren't really much of a thing for normal people, just business.

The Hiptop Sidekick wasn't introduced until 2002 in the US and I'd wager that that was what kicked off the texting trend in North America. Well, really just the US because Canada didn't get it and they then really pushed the Blackberry for consumers.

It's crazy when you see how quickly things progressed in a few short years with BB, WinCE, and then iOS. Seems like so much development in a short 5 years from Hiptop to iPhone. Like 5 years ago was 2020 and what has been the great development? Not much. Just refinement, I guess.