Smart when phones weren't.
US Patent #
6,725,060 
Priority Date:
02/15/2000
What if a phone was more than a conversation piece? Some of the earliest versions of the modern day smartphone were born out of Qualcomm’s commitment to bringing smart ideas to life, no matter what conventional thinking has dictated before.
TEAM MEMBERS
Murtuza T. Chhatriwala
- Engineer, Senior Staff Manager, Qualcomm Technologies Inc
- San Diego Office
- With Qualcomm since 1998
Mutuza is a multi-level blackbelt in engineering awesomeness due to his skills in software engineering that led to this patent. In wireless technologies, which he currently practices in Qualcomm R&D, he has several inventions and pending patent applications in wireless data compression methods.
TEAM MEMBERS
Clarence C. Wong
- Engineer, Senior Staff Manager, Qualcomm Technologies Inc
- San Diego Office
- With Qualcomm since 1993
An accomplished software engineer, Clarence knows how to make smartphones work from direct experience back when Qualcomm made CDMA phones. Clarence continues to amass his software wizardry skills in Qualcomm’s chipset division by making software automation and test tools happen –and inventing and patenting along the way.
TEAM MEMBERS
Stephen A. Sprigg
- Senior Vice President, Engineering, Qualcomm Technologies Inc
- San Diego Office
- With Qualcomm since 1997
An accountant turned coder, Steve has been innovating and inventing across multiple fields for decades. He holds more than 50 US patents and numerous international patents from his inventing contributions in the first smartphones, the first app store, and more recently in IoE technologies.
TEAM MEMBERS
Jason B. Kenagy
- Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Inc
- San Diego Office
- With Qualcomm since 1995
Hired at Qualcomm as a user interface designer, Jason took on additional responsibility in software development, product management, and business development, finding numerous opportunities to invent and patent inventions along the way. Jason is a big believer in intellectual property being a profound and righteous human right that anyone capable of achieving should pursue.
Key Facts
- Years ago, Qualcomm executives literally taped a phone to a PDA to try to convince some of today’s strongest smartphone makers that a combined device would be of great value. Palm was the PDA maker at the time that understood the vision.
- The pdQ smartphone was developed in cooperation with Palm. The device was the first smartphone, since it included the following attributes: digital wireless connectivity, touchscreen, open OS able to run downloadable apps, and more.
- Many other inventions and patents resulted from this initiative, including “airplane mode,” that enabled smartphone users to turn off their phones, yet still use other functions of the device on an airplane.