From my shoebox museum of relics, this gizmo was a demonstration of tech wonder. The Personal Digital Assistant in 2002 (5 years before the iPhone splash) was in its infancy and more novelty than necessity.

The Axim was predated (10 yrs.) by Apple’s early PDA attempt and failure; Newton Message Pad. The claim to fame for these early devices was hand written character recognition. Using a stylus pen on the 240 x 320 TFT screen display you could take notes. Built in was a microphone for memos. The Windows Mobile OS had an appointment calendar, To-Do list, address book, and calculator. Microsoft had a protocol called ActiveSync for file transfer and outlook email. The X5 did not have WiFi or Bluetooth. Connectivity was by serial cable — early days.

Advancing design iterations from Dell and Palm established a market but then in 2007 Apple brought it all together with the first smartphone. These traditional PDAs were finished off with the advent of iPad and touch screen tablets.

My Pocket PC is a paperweight now. The charging stand accessory is nowhere to be found. I did find and remove its SD Card (capacity 8MB). Surprisingly the old (20 yrs.) card had valid data on it but it was nothing; just some picture files from another relic from the shoebox museum — a Canon PowerShot SD 30 Digital ELPH 5.0 MEGA PIXELS.