1999, May 2nd

  William sat beside Eve as they discussed their next moves. She sighed, paused the game, and put down the Game Boy. "So, what now? You said you wanted to discuss something?"

  He nodded, "Yeah. I've been thinking for a while."

  She groaned, "Oh no. Not again."

  He chuckled, "Oh, yessss... I actually got the idea from that." He pointed towards the Game Boy.

  Eve looked over, "From this?"

  "Yeah." William picked it up and fiddled with it, "You see, this is a handheld console, designed to be portable and playable anywhere, correct? And that gave me the idea. What if, instead of a console, we do that for a whole PC?"

  "A portable PC? Those already exist, Will. They're called laptops. Ever heard of them?"

  He rolled his eyes, "Stop interrupting me. I'm trying to be dramatic here." He couched, "Anyway, this thing will be pocket-sized." He put down the Game Boy. "But it'll still have all the functionalities of a PC, like the internet, email, gaming, etc., and all the functionalities of a phone, like calling and texting."

  She narrowed her eyes, "So a combination between a phone and a computer?"

  "Exactly. It'll be able to do most of the things a computer can do, although on a much smaller scale."

  "That's impossible, Will."

  "Why do you think so?"

  "First of all, have you thought about the battery life?"

  He waved his hand, "Of course. That's the first thing I solved. I have the designs for optimizations in a lithium-polymer battery. I've been studying for the past month, so I was able to make some minor improvements."

  She sighed, "Show me. How will it look? I know you already have the designs."

  He grinned, "I'll go get it."

  He got the designs from his room and gave them to Eve, "See? All the problems are solved."

  She looked through it. "This is brilliant, but this will cost a lot of capital even to get started."

  He nodded solemnly, "I figured. I estimated around 100 million to get started and an extra 200 - 300 million to develop it fully."

  "We don't have that much."

  "But we already have 100 million from OS sales, no? I thought we got that a few days ago."

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She frowned, "Yeah, but we've reinvested half of that back into our products. We only have 50 million dollars on hand right now."

  He rubbed his head, "I guess I should've pitched this to you sooner. Whatever. This'll be a long-term project anyway. My estimates show that we'll be ready to release by Q2 of 2001 if we get started next month."

  "24 months?" Eve looked deeply at the design. It was very well-designed, especially for William, who had never dipped a toe into hardware before. "That's possible, I suppose. But that's assuming we don't have to do much trial and error." She looked straight at William, "How sure are you about this design?"

  "99% sure. The 1% is for malfunctions." It was true. He had only started learning hardware a month ago. But with the foundation of knowledge given by the smartphone prototype, it was easy enough for him to learn the basics. Combined with the odd bits of hardware knowledge he knew from his past life, he was able to 'innovate' rather easily.

  She nodded, "Alright. I'll trust you. We'll start next month. Just to note, in six months, we'll be expanding on the international market for our OS as well."

  "Have you taken care of all the regulations from the EU?" He asked with a frown.

  "Yeah. All taken care of."

  "Good. We'll be making even more now. Take note of competitors now. They'll likely make a move once the news gets out."

  She nodded, her face serious, "Yeah. That's what I thought too. So I'm preparing some countermeasures."

  He smiled, "What would we do without you, Eve?"

  She grinned, "You'll probably still succeed, though much, much slower than now."

  "True true."

  1999, May 7th

  William had started working on the OS for the new smartphone. While he couldn't do any driver work, he could certainly add a placeholder until he could. The OS would be a fork of QuantumOS, which was for desktops. When he made QuantumOS, he made sure that it was versatile enough to be modified.

  The OS would have multiple features. The touchscreen would be highly optimized, making it only a single-touch touchscreen. For the UI, as the first version, he wanted to make it have large, simple buttons. He also planned to add lightweight app sandboxing and modify the kernel so that it can run on low-power ARM architecture. He also planned to add many pre-installed apps like contacts, SMS, Calendar, Clock, QuantumFlux Mobile, Notes, and Settings. And with power management systems like adaptive brightness and battery health monitoring, along with notification systems, he would have a stellar OS for mobile. But that was only the core features. He planned to add many advanced features, like a mobile app store, in which custom apps could be submitted through the web and be reviewed manually; a universal search system that would search not only apps but also files, folders, contacts, and messages; TheodosianWalls for mobile messaging and security; and proper multitasking. While these may sound rather basic, they were rather advanced for the time.

  In fact, most of these would be groundbreaking. Still, he was satisfied with the feature list for now. If he added any more, the hardware wouldn't be able to handle it.

  For the UI, he planned to make three sets of themes for the UI. The two would be, of course, light and dark themes. The dark theme would be the default, as it should always be, and the other two themes would be selectable. For the third theme, he planned to make it something in the middle of light and dark themes. If dark theme were night and light theme was day, this theme would be a cloudy day... He didn't know where this was going, but that was the best comparison he could come up with.

  And as always, the OS would have to be extremely optimized. He knew how bad it felt when the UI slowed down or if anything lagged. And just like with convenience, performance was king. People wouldn't notice how smooth something was until they've experienced how janky something was. And he planned to make his customers unable to live without the smoothness and the performance his products gave, along with prices that weren't too high, the customers wouldn't be able to leave even if they wanted to. He felt like an evil mastermind thinking like this but he couldn't help himself.