

PDAs are not “SmartPhones”. if we want to go that route, we can trace the first “Smart Phone” to the Berkley Unix “Mobile Phone Device”.
iPhone was the first to market, but to get there required them pushing vendors into exclusivity agreements and Steve Jobs threatening to “flatten Thier companies, in court” if they backed out and refused.
Steve was very biligerent to his friends and allies. shrewd, like a dictator, not like a general. if he didn’t like your descent he would steamroll over you. he would make promises all the time to his staff, to get them to work harder on projects, just to peacemeal them and shoehorn them into weaker projects that would make customers dependent and demand more.
what Steve jobs did best, is know how to make a cult and exploit the desire for “if only it could do ‘X’ it would be perfect”.
don’t take my word for It. his business partners said the same thing… they begged him to come back as he sabotaged them externally when they tried to improve…
apple went through a period where they genuinely were improving. they sold Thier software and hardware to third parties to make Thier own versions…
but then Steve jobs went and sabotaged them, got a massive amount of bad press for apple to make them appear weak, and put the 2 final nails in the coffin.
he pushed software vendors to support m$ and next step more.
then he went to apples suppliers and made it for it was even more difficult for them to develop in-house hardware to compete with third parties…
all of this, so they would start to go bankrupt so Steve could ride in on his white horse going “See, you should of stuck with my vision”. then Steve goes and pushes for restrictive hardware with a architecture change so third party models would be obsolete, clones pc-clones from asia (mostly JVC/nec) which were exploring with transparent plastics and still tried to shovel next step to everyone…

what year do you think it is?
I am using my VR headset playing half-life alyx, while using my premium Logitech mouse, Elgato stream deck and streaming to YouTube.
nothing has any issues. all of my messaging services have apps and just work “out of the box”. setup took me maybe 20 minutes. most of it was just going to my phone for 2fa.
only time this is ever a issue is obscure, windows only applications that use special hardware authentication like some old CAD software. or some silly editing software like Adobe cloud who intentionally block Linux. (also older adobe software is better anyways and works. Linux alternatives exist and work equally as good.)
I remember how it was 5 & 10 years ago. struggling at each step. but it’s not the case today. on the rare occasion I need to spend time diagnosing something, it’s usually because the company behind it did something disgusting, that makes me want to stop using their services anyways.
it’s rarely ever hardware or software that doesn’t use online services.