Apple showed the cancelled prototype of a smartphone.

Long before the iPhone, Apple has developed a concept phone WALT, or Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone. Promising mobile phone was first demonstrated at the Macworld event in Boston in 1993, reports “Today” with reference to the TechSpot.

However soon after showing the project was cancelled. One of the Australian Apple developer Sonny Dickson has kept this gadget and posted the video with a working prototype of the first smartphone of the company.

For its time the mobile device was fairly advanced and the head was ahead of any existing at that time, mobile phone. WALT worked not only as a phone and a Fax, but provided users with access to online banking, had a touch screen with stylus support and understand handwritten input. It even comes with a built-in address book displays the names of incoming callers and was able to set separate ringtones for each profile .

The device, developed in partnership with the telecommunications company BellSouth represents a symbiosis of tablet and landline phone. A lot of details in its design borrowed from the PowerBook 100. WALT works on Mac OS 6.0.8 installed on the internal hard drive and uses software HyperCard (similar to Finder).

In the end, Apple decided to close the project, and the phone WALT was not on sale. Being in oblivion for almost a quarter century, WALT device is still in active working condition. But the speed of it is extremely low: on video it is visible a long boot delay when using the stylus, although this technology was quite advanced for its time. Later the basic ideas inherent in WALT, were transferred to the iPhone, which was released in 2007.

MacRumors notes that such early prototypes were equipped with the unusual guidelines in which owners of Apple gave obvious advice, including not to use the WALT near the water, not to drop it or step on the cables to avoid electric shock.