In early January 2015, reading this publication here about the smart pen, I remembered that I had read about such a thing many years ago in the magazine Around the World. This gave me the idea that really a lot of new things are forgotten and rethought old.

It so happened that I actively read these magazines in the early 2000s, and there among the descriptions of different countries, cities, historical events and other material was the most interesting for me heading "Technoparad", where it was told about modern (at that time) gadgets, new revolutionary devices, concepts. I asked permission from "Around the World" and after a positive response, I decided to share this interesting material with readers.
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The images were scanned by me from magazines, the text of the notes is in a revised form, all rights belong to the magazine "Around the World" .

Solar cell phone

What to do if the phone is dead? You just need to put it in the sun. This makes sense if it is equipped with a battery from Sunpower Systems. It is alleged that to fully charge enough five hours in the sun. Similar batteries were issued for all mass phones.
Source: Journal for May 2001, p.40.

Smart House

If an e-mail message came from the washing machine - it means that the future has already come and your home is equipped with an Ariston Digital system. This system connects all appliances in the apartment, and it does not require any additional connections - the connection between them is provided by wiring, and with the outside world - by the Internet and GSM. Each household appliance diagnoses itself and reports any problems to the central Ariston service center. If it is possible to eliminate the failure remotely, then instructions will be sent to the device via e-mail (patch, firmware) and the device will correct its work. If the failure was not resolved, the owner arrives by fax, wired or cell phone, or by email. The smart home control panel is a touchscreen monitor through which a person interacts with the Leon @ rdo control system.
Source: Journal for July 2001, p.96.

Ancestor of smartwatch?

On the image - Siemens Wristphone, an ordinary GSM cell phone, which can also act as a watch and be mounted on the arm. Concept weight - 36 grams.

As far as I was able to figure out, this ancestor of the SmartWatch did not hit the mass market, remaining a beautiful concept.
Source: Journal for July 2001, p.97.

One-time anonymous phone

You cannot call this cell phone, you can only talk on it for 1 hour, and then you can safely throw it away. Hop-on wireless measures 6x11x1 cm, the device has only two buttons: “call” and “hang up”. When you click on "Call" you need to pronounce the number of the called subscriber, which is automatically recognized by the voice recognition system, and dialing occurs. Button "End", respectively, ends the conversation. Included is a disposable phone itself, an earphone with a microphone and 1 hour of talking. The design is important: each phone can have it unique and bright. It’s not at all a pity to lose such a phone, no one can call it, you don’t have to worry about charging the battery, replenishing the account, etc. There were versions of GSM and CDMA, but only for the United States.

The interesting thing is that a month after this news plane attacks occurred on September 11, and it is possible that it was because of these attacks and the subsequent tightening of the nuts that one-time anonymous phones were not allowed to go, although they could occupy their niche and become popular.
Source: Journal for August 2001, p.102.

And smartphones could be like that!

The eternal problem of wearable gadgets is how to hide the big screen in a small case. Someone makes huge "shovels" that barely fit into a pocket, someone creates special mobile interfaces, but the Interactive Imaging System company at one time went the other way. The image shows the iCom communicator, which has a special liquid crystal display with an eyepiece. It is necessary to lean it against the eye - and it will create the feeling that we have a 21-inch monitor with a resolution of 640x480, located at a distance of 85 cm from the eyes. The keyboard issue was also resolved: a “on-screen keyboard” was developed for the communicator, which can be controlled using the OptiNav mouse analog and scroll buttons, using only one finger. There is an interface for memory cards CompactFlash and the ability to connect many other devices. The operating system is Windows (apparently, CE).

Searching the Internet, I managed to find another similar model of the communicator from the same company. In this case, there is a hardware QWERTY-keyboard and an additional LCD screen. More details can be found at this link </ a.
Source: Journal for September 2001, p.72.

Source - "Around the World", http://www.vokrugsveta.ru

If this material will be interesting to readers, this post will continue: in the old magazines there is a lot of interesting things.