Over the past ten years, the smartphone has gone from a large, belt-holstered badge of geekiness to a mass-market mobile computing platform. In the mid-’90s, PDAs were being paired with mobile phones for the ultimate in mobile connectivity. Early examples included the IBM Simon and the Nokia Communicator. At the beginning of the last decade, these devices became more sophisticated as cellular data technologies, mobile processors, and touchscreen displays matured.

In this photo gallery, we survey the last ten years or so of smartphone history with a look at two important smartphones from each year. Though the later half of the decade is mostly dominated by Apple’s iPhone and more recent Android-powered phones, there have been a number of impressive models, such as the iconic Nokia Communicator series, Palm Treo, and Motorola Droid.

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2000/2001

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The Ericsson R380—the spiritual predecessor to the later P800 and P900 series, was one of the first Symbian-powered devices, and is considered by some to be the “first” smartphone on the market.

Nokia first launched its 9000-series communicators in 1996, though the 9120 was the first to feature a color screen. Nokia also dropped the original Intel 386-based processor and GEOS operating system for Symbian running on an ARM9-based core. Nokia’s 9000-series gradually introduced many of the features we now consider common smartphone features.

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2002

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Few remember Handspring, the company started by the original Palm founders to build PalmOS devices that Palm itself couldn’t or wouldn’t build. For instance, Handspring was the first to release a color PalmOS device, and the first to launch a PalmOS-powered smartphone. The original Treo 180 was a flip-style device which married PalmOS’s PDA capabilities with a cell phone. Shortly thereafter, Palm bought Handspring, and the Treo became one of the top smartphones for the next several years.

Ericsson merged its mobile phone division with Sony’s, assimilating Borg-style into Sony Ericsson. The partnership injected Ericsson’s devices with some serious Sony style, the early fruits of which resulted in one of the first camera phones, the P800.

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2003

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The T-mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition was one of the first Windows Mobile (then called Pocket PC) smartphones. Windows Mobile devices were quite popular among business users because of the integration with desktop Windows, and compatibility with Exchange enterprise e-mail servers and Office documents.

Shortly after Palm brought back its “wayward” founders, the company launched the Treo 600. The flip form-factor was dropped in favor of a solid, “candy bar” style, and the hardware was improved with a backlit QWERTY keyboard, color screen, and a low-resolution camera. For the next three to four years, the Treo dominated the US smartphone market.

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2004

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RIM had been making several BlackBerrys earlier in the decade, which added e-mail and cell phone capabilities to the company’s popular, business-class, two-way pagers. However, the 6120 is significant in that it was the first BlackBerry to be built like a phone—previous models required a plug-in headset to make calls. Many high-powered executives quickly became addicted to the connectivity of their “CrackBerrys.”

The Treo line was still going strong in 2004, and the 650 increased the screen resolution to a whopping 320×320 pixels, added support for the fledgling Bluetooth, and bumped data speeds up to EDGE/CDMA standards. Palm would continue with minor upgrades for a couple years before the Treo line eventually fizzled, as customers glommed on to modern touchscreen platforms like iPhone and Android.

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2005

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The svelte, laser-etched, brushed aluminum, Motorla Razr was for many Americans the first smartphone they ever used. It stayed on the market as one of the top-selling mobile phones in the US for several years, and large carrier subsidies and price drops made it an easy choice in later years. Moto’s customized Symbian UI suffered from carrier limitations in many cases, though a large cottage industry supported hacks to enable features—like Bluetooth tethering—that some carriers forced Moto to disable via firmware.

The iPAQ started life as a Pocket PC PDA, but HP later added cellular hardware to make it a smartphone proper. The Windows Mobile-powered 6500 competed heavily with the Treo 650 released the year before. The 6500 added EDGE 2G data connectivity, but oddly lacked WiFi and camera hardware. Later variants added these features back.

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2006

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Danger’s Hiptop smartphones, marketed as the Sidekick by T-mobile, were popular among celebrities, high-tech geeks, and, thanks to instant messaging apps and a QWERTY keyboard, teens. The third-generation hardware, built by Sharp, also benefitted from the device’s built-in access to downloadable apps—a model that Apple later made famous with the iPhone App Store.

HTC, now well-known for Android smartphones like the T-mobile G1 and Verizon Droid Incredible, made an early mark by building OEM Windows Mobile-based touchscreen devices. The Cingular 8525 was one such device.

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2007

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In mid-2007, Apple changed the smartphone landscape overnight with the release of its now-iconic iPhone. Though the first generation lacked 3G capabilities, and the only (official) way to deliver apps was via the Web (Steve Jobs quipped that HTML and JavaScript were the iPhone’s SDK), the WebKit-powered Mobile Safari set a very high bar for the future of the mobile Web. Apple also maintained control over its device, instead of letting carriers dictate features—though that control cost Apple 5 years of exclusivity with AT&T in the US.

The Nokia N95 smartphone was one of the first to integrate all of the hardware we now consider common on a smartphone, including a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, GPS receiver, WiFi, Bluetooth, front-facing camera for video calling, video out, and more. The N95 could also run apps built for native Symbian, JavaME, or the mobile version of Flash.

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2008

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With the iPhone 3G, Apple added higher-speed UMTS data connectivity, which was just beginning to become widespread in the US. The company also opened up the iPhone to third-party developers. Apple launched the App Store in July, and the rest is mobile developer history.

HTC built one of the first Android-powered smartphones, continuing its success as a smartphone OEM. The device launched in the US as the T-mobile G1, the first “Google-powered” smartphone.

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2009

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Verizon kicked off a very successful campaign to add Android phones to its line-up by licensing the “Droid” name from Lucasfilm. It’s marketing push has made “Droid” synonymous with Android smartphones in the US, and helped propel Android as one of the most popular platforms domestically. The original Droid was recently updated with minor tweaks, confirming the design as a successful formula.

Palm was an early leader in smartphones due to its successful Treo line, but the company quickly floundered under the weight of tough competition from Apple and others when it couldn’t manage to get its next-generation products out of the R&D pipeline. A hard reset with management and a round of high-profile hires from Apple’s iPhone division resulted in the webOS-powered Palm Pre. Though it wasn’t successful enough to keep Palm from being eaten up by HP, its innovative webOS showed just what developers could do with technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

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2010

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Does the iPhone 4 have some issues with its external antenna design? Sure. Has that stopped it from being one of the top selling smartphone models worldwide? Not one bit. Apple improved nearly every aspect of the iPhone, including powering it with its A4 processor, including a “print-quality” IPS display, adding a front-facing camera for FaceTime video calls, and packing in a 5MP camera that, pixel-for-pixel. beats nearly any smartphone on the market. With tons of developer support, Apple’s platform is consistently providing competitors with a quickly moving target.

Plenty of Android-based smartphones have launched this past year, but Samsung’s Galaxy S series is unique in that Samsung managed to launch a version on every major carrier in the US. Unlike most smartphones, you can get a Galaxy S—with slight cosmetic variations and different carrier-specific apps—on Verizon, AT&T, and T-mobile. Sprint also carries a 4G-enabled, QWERTY slider variant built off the Galaxy S Pro.

Though we may not have covered your favorite smartphone model from years past, these 20 devices represent some interesting milestones along the path to smartphone ubiquity. If there was a device you really liked but feel like it got left out, sound off in the comments—be sure to let us know why you couldn’t live without it (until your contract was up, that is).

[Via Ars Technica]