10 years ago today, Microsoft unvieled the first Pocket PCs at an event in Grand Central, Manhattan. MVP Arne Hess has a brief history here. The Pocket PC would eventually grow on to be renamed Windows Mobile and now Windows Phones. Four new devices were announced during the event on April 19th of 2000. HP, Compaq, Casio and Symbol each were showing off devices. What’s interesting to note is that the Compaq H3600 announced was actually HTC’s first product ever. This was back when HTC was just a manufacturer. Compaq and Microsoft worked closely with HTC back then to develop what would become an extremely popular and powerful device. While the other devices were available right away, the Compaq iPAQ H3600 took a little longer to hit the shelves at which point it sold out very quickly.

It’s also interesting to note that these devices were all able to play MP3 music, videos, GPS navigation, copy/paste, Calendar/Contacts/Tasks/Notes sync, full HTML web browsing, and Microsoft Office Document editing… at a time when Apple was first releasing their original iPod with a greyscale screen which could only play music.