The Motorola Envoy Personal Wireless Communicator was a

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

initially slated for release by

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

in summer 1994 but delayed and then available for public sale in February 1995. It was built to run General Magic's

Magic CAP Magic Cap (short for Magic Communicating Applications Platform) is a discontinued object-oriented operating system for PDAs developed by General Magic. Tony Fadell was a contributor to the platform, Bill Atkinson shows the credits screen on M ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

, and it combined wireless, telephone, and

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

modems in a single PDA package.

Andy Rubin Andrew E. Rubin (born March 13, 1963) is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Rubin founded Danger Inc. in 1999 and left in 2003; Danger was eventually acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Rubin founded Android Inc. ...

led development of the Motorola Envoy. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) were electronic handheld organizers that were used in the 1990s to communicate via email, manage calendars, store contact information, and manage files. Examples of PDAs include the

Newton MessagePad The MessagePad is a series of personal digital assistant devices developed by Apple Computer for the Newton platform, first released in 1993. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's MessagePad devices was undertaken in Japan ...

released by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

in 1993 and the

Palm Pilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Pa ...

released by

Palm Inc. Palm, Inc., was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and developing software. Palm designed the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, and was known for the Treo 600, one o ...

in 1996. The Motorola Envoy was a particularly notable PDA in view of its built-in wireless communication capability and its well-received

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

, thus referenced by some to be a predecessor of the modern day smartphone. The hardware of the Motorola Envoy included a Motorola Dragon I/68349 microprocessor, 4 MB of

read only memory Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing s ...

(ROM), 1 MB of

random access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written ...

(RAM), and an LCD display. Of particular interest were the wireless communications capabilities of the Envoy. Its built-in communication components included a

radio modem Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

capable of 4,800

bits per second In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction ...

communication, a fax and data modem, and an infrared

transceiver In radio communication, a transceiver is an electronic device which is a combination of a radio ''trans''mitter and a re''ceiver'', hence the name. It can both transmit and receive radio waves using an antenna, for communication purposes. The ...

capable of 38.4 kbit/s of data transfer. The Envoy also included a

PCMCIA The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was an industry consortium of computer hardware manufacturers from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), it created v ...

interface to expands its communications or other capabilities. The housing had dimensions of (height, width, depth) and weighed about . The Motorola Envoy was one of the first PDAs to operate the Magic CAP software, which made extensive use of the built-in wireless communications components of the device. The main screen of Magic CAP displayed a desktop having a phone icon, Rolodex icon, Postcard/writing instrument icon, notebook icon, and calendar book icon, thus simulating real-world productivity tools used by many people. Similarly, a clock, an inbox, an outbox, and a filing cabinet were shown behind the desk, and a control bar provided access to other features of the device. Several of these tools provided simple access to communication features, such as text messaging and addresses, which are widely used by modern smartphones. The Motorola Envoy provided a convenient way to utilize communication data without a wired connection but, ultimately, the Envoy was held back by its high cost of ownership. The Envoy device had a price tag of about $1500 at launch, and an early-adopter reported a bill for one month of usage of about $400 from the ARDIS network for

data communication Data communication, including data transmission and data reception, is the transfer of data, transmitted and received over a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channel. Examples of such channels are copper wires, optic ...

. Motorola reused the name for at least one previous product. It is also a

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...

tone and vibrate paging receiver produced in the mid-1980s that responded to two-tone sequential encoding, including GE type 99, Quick Call II & 1+1, REACH*, and 5-Tone Sequential.

References

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Envoy Envoy or Envoys may refer to: Diplomacy * Diplomacy, in general * Envoy (title) * Special envoy, a type of Diplomatic rank#Special envoy, diplomatic rank Brands *Airspeed Envoy, a 1930s British light transport aircraft *Envoy (automobile), an au ...

Personal digital assistants