iPhone 4S, Surface Tablet, PalmPilot: 10 Mobile Gadgets We Love

With Valentine's Day coming up, we're waxing nostalgic about some of our most-loved mobile devices, from the PalmPilot to the iPhone4S.

David Wagner

Executive Editor, Community & IT Life

February 03, 2015

Call me a Windows fan boy. Call me crazy for loving Windows 8. But the surface is the tablet I've waited for -- one that lets

This is my personal phone (until my contract allows me to upgrade later this year), so I'll admit to a little bias here. But

I could have easily picked the iPad. And in many ways the Kindle Fire is a limited device (especially the original, the one I

In my mind, this is the classic iPhone. It is the first with the retina display. The front-facing camera is the kind of minor

The people who inspired the term Crackberry would probably pick a different phone, since the BlackBerry Pearl lacks the typic

The PDA heyday lasted maybe a decade or so, at most. During much of that time, PalmPilot was like Kleenex. For the brief peri

It's certainly mobile. And it's certainly a device. Yet, the Game Boy has no connectivity and nothing we think of in terms of

Mobile storage and playback. Ability to "write" your own mix-tapes onto it. Sounds like a mobile device to me. Plus, the Sony

Books are the original mobile device. Stone tablets were too heavy. Clay broke. And loose paper just blows away. The book is

Of course, we had some honorable mentions, such as the iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, and even Google Glass. I'm guessing Microsof

There will probably be some debate over whether the laptop is a mobile device. But in my mind there is no question. I've used

1/12

In honor of Valentine's Day later this month, InformationWeek is highlighting the gadgets we love. From the silly to the serious, we just adore technology, and we know you do as well. Over the course of the next week, we'll be taking a look at some of our favorite tech toys of all time. Today, we're paying homage to our favorite mobile devices.

The mobile device seems like a pretty short-lived category, but when you think about it, we've been doing our best to miniaturize and mobilize technology for decades. Our smartphones are now significantly more powerful than the computers that landed on the moon (talk about mobile technology). The iPhone is less than eight years old, but remember when you couldn't live without a PDA? They've been around since 1984. Think about that for a second. The first PDA came out the same year Apple released the Macintosh and this awesome commercial.

Anyone else find it a little eerie that the devices released Apple (and others) since then actually do make our world a little more like George Orwell's 1984, with cameras everywhere? These items even make it easier for the government to track us wherever we go.

OK, taking off our tinfoil hat, we've known since the first cave painting that we needed a mobile device. Those paintings recorded the memory of nomadic hunters and gatherers. The scenes painted on the walls told of the success of the hunt for sake of the painters -- should they ever return -- and for others who may have found the cave. The only problem was you couldn't fold up the cave wall like a map. So stories had to be shared around the camp fire. Since then, we've been on a quest to find ways to store our most important information in more efficient and more mobile means.

[Office for Android, Outlook upgrade, and more in Microsoft news.]

Of course, we could just fill a whole gallery of mobile devices with various versions of the iPhone, the iPad, and the Galaxy. That would be dull. So, the rules are that only one version of any mobile device gets into our top 10 here. And, even though it is obvious that the iPhone 6 is more powerful than earlier versions, if a device has multiple versions, we're going to pick the one that we enjoyed most during its run. Otherwise, if it stores information and you can pick it up and move it, it is fair game. Chances are, you've owned a bunch of these in your lifetime.

Click through InformationWeek's list of favorities, which runs from newest to oldest. See which of your favorites we nailed. Then hit us up in the comments section below and tell us about all the ones we missed.