Am I the only one who owned a Cybiko?
It feels that way sometimes, but this device was a seminal piece of technology that fueled my fire for more futuristic gadgets.
What is a Cybiko and why did I want one?
The Cybiko was designed to be a personal organizer of sorts for tweens and teens. Kind of a cool Palm Pilot so futurist teens could feel like their high-powered corporate parents who were always poking away at their rudimentary devices of the time. Maybe think of it like a mashup between a digital organizer, a gameboy, and a walkie-talkie?
It was the year 2000 and I'm not sure how the Cybiko came across my 15-year-old radar. There may have been a few TV commercials or maybe they had a print ad somewhere that caught my eye. It may have even earned a spot in some sort of sales flyer from Best Buy, Circuit City, or whatever other brick and mortar stores were slinging gadgets at the time. Come to think of it, I was a pretty voracious reader of the Sunday Times Union Newspaper in my teen years. My usual first stop was the funnies and sales flyers, so it's likely I saw it there.
No matter where I heard about it, the device became an object of my young tech nerd desire. I never saw one in person before buying it and I wasn't even clear on all of the features, but it seemed like something I needed in my life. My memory gets a little foggy about whether it was Christmas or a birthday gift, but my parents (more likely Mom) was able to hunt one down for me.
It was mine in all of its translucent blue plastic glory. Truth be told, I wanted the badass looking clear version or the black model with a yellow keyboard, but any color was difficult enough to come by. Maybe these things were popular in Japan or Europe but I never got the sense that many of them made their way to the states.
The device was beautiful in a way that only plastic 90s/early 00s tech could be. It was rectangular with a thin chin that expanded to the widest point at the top of the screen. There was a radio antenna to help with the extremely poor wireless communication feature. There was even a little hole on the side where you could store the stylus. Yep, it had a stylus! Or at least that's what they called it. If I recall correctly, it was just a flimsy piece of rounded plastic that didn't really help you do anything on the tiny screen. It was sometimes useful to press the tiny rubberized keyboard buttons.
What could it do?
Oh yes, this was before the days of touch-screen keyboard. You had to type away on physical keys like some sort of animal. But what were you really typing anway? Like I said, this was supposed to be a planner/calculator/gaming device, etc. But in reality, it couldn't do any of those things very well. I tried to use the calendar and note taking app. I even remember bringing to class pretending to be an engaged high school student taking notes on a tiny 2 inch screen. The games were probably the best part but even those weren't impressive compared to anything Nintendo or even Sega was cranking out at the time. Maybe some of the early Playstation games were out at this point too. But the Cybiko wasn't meant to compete with them.
I dreamed of a world where all of my friends and classmates also had Cybikos and we could wirelessly communicate to our heart's content. In reality, I only knew of two other real human kids who also had a Cybiko. Yes, you could sit right next to someone and send them digital messages but the range was not at all impressive. The weak signal could barely get through even one wall. My visions of messaging friends in other classrooms was never realized. Yes, it was only a few years before everyone had their own personal cell phone and could text each other whenever they'd like, but this seemed way cooler than a phone.
Let's look at one positive thing that the Cybiko had going for it. It was developer-friendly and some creative minds put out some great open-source software. There were clever little puzzles and full-fledged ports of classic console and arcade games. I could play a mean game of Pac-Man. There was a really cool skateboarding game with realistic vibrating haptic feedback. There was even a rudimentary web browser that you could use if you tethered two Cybikos together. One would act as a modem of sorts while the other could access bare bones web pages. It was never a graceful experience, but I loved the thrill of tinkering with it. There was even a really simple email exchange program on the Cybiko as well. You had to load up your emails via direct computer connection before heading out and then reconnect it when you got home to send any messages that were waiting in your queue. But it did technically let you write emails while on the go!
Maybe it never gathered the critical mass of popularity to get enough developers to stick with it, but there was a short time when new "apps" (I don't think we really used that word yet) were easy to come by. Don't forget that the storage on the device was only 512KB of flash memory-based ROM along with 256KB RAM installed. There was an add-on slot located in the rear, but I never had the chance to install extra storage. Another add-on that I never got my hands on was an mpe-player expanison! Yep, you could just pop an additional cartridge into the expansion slot and you'd have yourself a bonafide mp3 player. The Cybiko really was the stuff of teenage dreams in the year 2000.
The Cybiko Xtreme
I even convinced my parents to buy me the upgraded model of Cybiko...the Cybiko Xtreme. Maybe they thought the device would help me stay on top of my homework or something? Parents were pretty clueless about digital handheld devices during this time but I digress. The Xtreme didn't have the same retro charm as the Cybiko Classic. It was less angular, less translucent. If the classic looked like it came from the 80s, the Xtreme clearly looked like a product of the early 2000s (and that isn't a compliment). But it did offer more storage, a faster processor, slightly better graphics and extended wireless capabilities. However, even the Xtreme version didn't seem to catch on. I recall seeing the last stock of Cybiko Xtremes in the bargain bins of places like Staples and Toys R' Us before they finally faded into the wild blue yonder of tech obsolescence.
Conclusion
So if the Cybiko couldn't really do everything that it claimed, why does it still stick with me as one of my favorite gadgets from my teenage years? I suppose it's because it offered a vision of what the future would be like. Even though it couldn't deliver on all of the promises, it planted the seeds in my head for a not-too-distant digital future. It was a device that was obviously ahead of its time. If kids were on the internet more during this time, it likely would have gathered more buzz to increase sales. But at the time, seeing another kid using one at school was the only way to really wrap your head around what it was capable of.
I'm not going to overstate the importance of the Cybiko as a precursor to our personal devices of today. Sure, it was the right piece of tech for me at the right time in my life. It obviously left an indelible mark on me even if I probably only used it regularly for a couple of months of high school. During those months, I got accustomed to charging it every night and bringing it with me everywhere..much like our current digital companions.
Would there have been an iPhone if not for the Cybiko? Yeah, it probably still would have come out, but there is no denying that this device was an important transition from the world of boring corporate personal digital assistants (PDAs) to the concept of mobile phones being fashion accessories that are always attached to us.
I can't be the only one out there with Cybiko memories. Anyone else have a similar device that left a lasting impression and influenced the way you appreciate technology today?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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I grew up in the area where the Times Union was distributed as well. Found the Cybiko in my highschool years as well. I bought two Cybiko units just so I could have a friend use one with me. That 50ft in open air range on the wireless capabilities is extremely laughable in retrospect. I only recall two games, Cylandia and a first-person maze game that I don't remember the name of.
I think that might have been my first experience with serial console hacking, because from the chatroom on their website I learned how to serial commands to dump the game data from Cylandia to edit in whatever I wanted for my Cy-B and send it back to the unit.
Simpler times!