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by nsxwolf 1184 days ago
This is wrong. I waited in line for mine. It was quite clearly a toy. It was a cool but barely usable tech demo and it was completely outclassed in features and usefulness by contemporary devices like the Motorola Q.

It showed the way forward, but it was a frustratingly limited device and everyone around at the time recognized that immediately.
1 comments
hn_throwaway_99 1184 days ago
> This is wrong.

Can we just accept that these are opinions? I also waited in line for the first iPhone, and it was by far better than any other phone I owned at the time. True, I was not a "CrackBerry" addict as was common for a certain class of worker in the 00s, but the ability to browse the "real" web in a way that was not completely hobbled was just night and day better than other phones at the time.

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nsxwolf 1184 days ago
I agree that the browser was revolutionary - but it was only really useable at home, on my wifi. The 2.5G wireless hobbled it so badly I never used it for anything more than basic info lookups. Web apps were just too painful to use and I could rarely complete an entire transaction with all the loading and back and forth. In the pre-app store era, that really mattered since the web was the only way to get anything done.
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hn_throwaway_99 1184 days ago
Agree with everything you've written, but that's why I said it was an opinion as to how important this was.

At that point around 2007, that vast majority of time I was in range of WiFi: at home, at work, or at a place with public wifi like a coffee shop/library. Totally agree that the 2.5 G made everything super slow, but honestly, in retrospect, that almost seems like a feature vs a bug. I would only pull out my phone on a cell connection for very targeted actions, e.g. pulling up maps, looking for phone numbers or business hours of operation, sending/reading email (as email was a batch operation the slow connection didn't have too much on an impact), etc. Point being that since it was a "costly" endeavor, I would only use it for things I was really intentional about. Versus now, when I'll pull out my phone at the slightest twinge of boredom and scroll, scroll, scroll through HN, Facebook, etc.

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