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As a single combined device I might suggest that the "minisec" created by Arthur C. Clarke in the 1976 novel Imperial Earth would be a good candidate for this. I remember reading this back when it first came out and thinking how amazing it would be to have a device such as was described. Fortunately we didn't have to wait 300 years for it to arrive. :-)

To your specific point. Unlike the tricorder which did not have communications capabilities or the Dick Tracy video phone/watch which could communicate but not retrieve data, the minisec was a single combined device. All other science fiction seems to have improved individual devices. The minisec was a combined device built to fit the human hand.

To your other point. The minisec did NOT have touchscreen capabilities. But, otherwise, served almost the exact same function as a smartphone today. Right down to the protagonist not able to imagine life without one.

Per Wiki:

"Clarke describes in great detail throughout the book a personal communications device called a 'minisec' combining mobile video phone and PDA with global data connectivity. He also describes a larger desk 'comsole' or communications console giving similar access to global information services."

Other Functions listed on Technovelgy included:

The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it.

Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode.

I remember the friend of the protagonist in the story storing sound recordings and music as well as other data. You mentioned games. His friend also used it to help determine how to use it in a geometric shape game.

Finally, like the smartphones today:

The device also had a dictionary function and could hold large amounts of data. It could also communicate with desktop console computers.

There's a 1966 SF story called The Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl, first published as a serial in Galaxy Science Fiction in three parts, starting in October 1966, later as a novel in 1969, which has a device called a "Joymaker" which — though audio only as far as I can remember — seems to fit the bill.

Here's a snippet from the wikipedia entry for the book:

Charles Dalgleish Forrester is revived from cryopreservation in the year 2527, having been killed in a fire 500 years earlier. Thanks to his insurance, after the expenses of his revival are paid he has a quarter of a million dollars, a fortune in his eyes. He can afford the luxuries of 26th century life, such as a Joymaker, a scepter-like portable computer terminal with some extra features like a drug dispenser.

After a heavy night partying, with some distant memory of an argument with somebody, he wakes in his new apartment, and over a 20th-century breakfast, checks in with his Joymaker. The Joymaker communicates by voice, and addresses him always as "Man Forrester". He is informed that he has a message from a woman whose name he doesn't recognize, and that someone called Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major has taken out a hunting license on him.

Sounds like a smartphone with Siri style helper to me.

I remember the "Dick Tracy" newspaper comic. They had futuristic devices. First the "wrist radio" and then later the "wrist TV".

The "computer book" that Penny carries in the Inspector Gadget cartoons seems to be a pretty good anticipation of the way smart phones are used today. It even came with a smart watch (you can just see it on her left arm).

She used to book and watch for communication and information access.

Edit: OK, I found it. It's a short story by John T. Sladek, the title is "Answers". It was really hard to find a copy on the Web, but here it is, in English:
Answers, by John Sladek, on Google Books

And here is a Spanish translation:
Respuestas, by John Sladek

If you read it, let me know if you think the "Captain Blip" device could be seen as an smartphone device.

My original answer:

There was a short sci-fi story for which, of course, I cannot recall its title nor its author, about a guy who bought a pocket calculator. It seems it was a very popular pocket calculator, because everyone was buying it at the time. The guy's wife noticed that her husband was increasilngly being absorbed by the new gadget. And not only her husband, but everyone using the device was just walking on the streets while staring at the screen. At some point, the wife decides to take a look at the screen of her husband's pocket calculator (while he was using it) and she sees nothing but weird, incomprehensible symbols on it. As if her husband (and everyone else using this pocket device) was being hypnotized and/or controlled by whatever was happening on the screen.

I read it like 15 years ago, previously to the smartphone era we are living in. Sometime ago, while watching people on the streets or on public transportation continuously staring at their smartphone screens, I made the connection between that sci-fi story and our current reality.

As said, I can't recall author nor title. I can only remember reading it on a sci-fi anthology written in Spanish language that I borrowed from a friend.

@JRE Arthur C Clarke had predicted the tablet in his 1968 novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey".

In Chapter 9, he describes a device called NewsPad which is remarkably similar to a tablet.

When [Floyd] had tired of official reports, memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one, he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers. He knew the codes of the more important ones by heart and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference. When he punched that, a postage-sized rectangle would expand till it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he finished he could flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

While numerous stories have anticipated such device, I want to make a note that, in some broad sense, you're asking about the commercially successful product and its function, and not of a technology. And it also seems that 60's videophones are pretty far from the commercial products of these days, so here's a lot of bias to the question.

Smartphone is a:

• computer


• with a telephony/radio interface allowing it to communicate with network of base stations


• powered by a LiPo-based energy source.

Was there a story that involved both general-purpose computers (add Linux, Windows, whatever), a prebuilt set of communication towers and a lot of enthusiatic people making, say, applications or nowaday's mesh networks with VoiP - aka, software? Spellbinder (TV) comes to mind, but it was filmed already at the early age of handheld devices.

The videophones are identified as:

• analog components


• no computing function, no applications


• plugged into telephone line or using some central point of radio signal (like a TV)


• no internal power source.

The most accurate anticipation of the smartphone is Ernst Jünger's Phonophor. In his 1949 novel Heliopolis he describes the phonophor as a shiny rectangular device with video chat, gps, ID, credit card, surveillance and polling functionalities. It also serves to indicate a person's social status, depending on the model. He even describes how the devices are use for something like social analytics.

A quote from the book:

In this context, the phonophor appeared as the ideal agent of planetary democracy, the means of linking everyone to everyone. The presence of the ancient assembly of the people, the market, the forum, extended across the entire planet, and beyond. Above all, the phonophor was a leveller beyond compare. From the time it found its perfect form, voting and polling the people no longer posed any technical difficulty; the will, the opinion of the immense masses were known and were measured immediately [...]. The Point Office housed one of these machines, which completed strange calculations. The yes, the no, the indecision of crowds were totalized as magnetic waves, and were readable that very instant.

As a matter of fact, continued Serner, the right of consultation remained restricted to a few men. Yes, all could listen and provide responses, but the articulation of the questions remained the privilege of a few. There reigned a passive equality combined with large differences of function. The old fiction of the right to vote was repeated in the style of automata.

Heliopolis, 337-338, 1949 (My translation from French. Not yet translated into English)

There was a sci fi show on TV a few years ago in which all the characters carried a "global." This device looked like a 3/4 inch copper scroll, but when held, a screen would pop out that would be a bit larger than the largest of today's smartphones. Once opened, the global was used much like today's smartphones. When finished, a touch of a button would retract the screen and back it would go into a pocket. That's the phone I'm waiting for. The problem is I can't remember the name of the show. It concluded with the hero and heroine leaving Earth for a better life on the alien planet.

I'd say a videophone was anticipated in countless science-fiction books and movies before it was technically feasible. It's an extremely obvious generalization of the telephone and television. I noticed it used in Aliens recently but there are dozens of earlier examples, like 2001 (1968). Even now it's fiddly to Skype or get real time streaming from a phone but I expect it will become absolutely standard in 20-30 years to have video in a phonecall.