[Nursie]

You mean a slab of glass, most of which is screen?

Wow. Design award of the decade... Or actually simply what people thought about before but wasn't possible until then. (The LG Prada around at the same time shows this)

It's pure fanboyism.

[Alupis]

Not to mention old sci-fi movies and tv shows having similar looking devices for decades.

[ethanbond]

Strange that if it was so obvious or so easy, there were people saying stuff like this [0]:

"Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here. I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks... Color me massively disappointed."

"Touch screen buttons? BAD idea. This thing will never work."

"no qwerty keyboard? ojhsdodsagfadhjldgs!!"

"This looks like a disgusting bastard child of iPod/Cellphone/PDA. Yes it's shiny, but I’m sure it won’t be so shiny once you touch it."

"lol last i checked many companies tried the tap to type and tap to dial ... IT DOESNT WORK STEVIE, people dont like non-tactile typing, its a simple fact, this isnt a phone its a mac pda wow yippie.... "

"It took apple how long to develop this ONE PHONE, samsung and motorola release new phones every few months lol, and constantly innovates and gets better, im sorry but if im sending text messages i'd rather have my thumb keyboard than some weird finger tapping on a screen crap."

Somebody should ask that last guy what phone he uses today.

And yet it seems literally no other company can figure out a form factor that competes with it. So yes, you're right, design award of the decade.

Do you really think that's HTC/Samsung/LG/Huawei/Motorola's inspiration for all their devices? They're modeled after the LG Prada?

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/17-of-...

[Nursie]

No, I think that that was the direction phones were moving in anyway, and it was an obvious step.

I also think that fanboys like yourself give way, way too much credit to Apple for 'inventing' the form factor and the smartphone when they weren't even first to market with that form factor and other smartphones had been around for years.

They did what they do well - designed a good product with mass appeal at the high end of the market, they even lead the market. I'm not trying to claim they're somehow bad or just derivative (because I'm not a fanboy)