This is a short story I wrote for an IEEE Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame Member Experience contest in 2019. The original IEEE posting is here, but in case that link dies someday, here's a copy. One thing I forgot to mention in the story was that this was July 20, 2005.
Week Nine: Paul Rito
Entry: Kyocera 7135 Palm Pilot phone Prize: Casio Men's viewranger PRO Trek Smart Quartz Sport Watch
I woke up in my tent around 6am, 2 miles outside of Lansing, IA, 2200 miles into a 3700 mile cross-country bicycling trip. I flipped open my Kyocera 7135 Palm Pilot phone, surfed to the NWS radar site and saw a massive red blob heading right my way. I hurriedly broke camp, stuffed my gear into my B.O.B. trailer and hi-tailed it into town. Just as the first lightning bolts flashed and the pelting rain started, I popped into a warm, cozy coffee shop for breakfast; dry and warm and safe from the storm. This was in the days of free data (when you could get it!), years before the iPhone, when Google Maps was an just a 4 month old infant. The tech wasn't high compared to today's standards, but that phone was a precursor that gets little credit and deserves much more. Logged my whole trip with "graffiti" and that phone helped me find camps, motels, food, and water and I rarely had to pull out my paper backups.