[gambiting]

...are we going to pretend smartphones didn't exist before iPhone was launched? I think I was on my 3rd one when the iPhone came out and even then it was a luxury toy for the rich, I didn't know anyone who actually had an iPhone for a good few years after they came out.

Unless you're implying something else?

[stouset]

This entire subthread is discussing the statement

> People end up thinking Apple invented something because they tend to make the first usable version

I think we can all agree that the original iPhone is the conceptual progenitor of virtually every phone that’s mattered in the market since it was released.

Smartphones prior to it have essentially zero descendants. For all intents and purposes they effectively did invent the smartphone. Hell “smartphones” as a distinct market all but don’t even exist any more. They’re barely even “phones” at this point. And this entire arc of development points directly back to the original iPhone release.

[Yajirobe]

your symbian nokias with keyboards don't count

[gambiting]

...because you said so? I'm assuming you will say Palms also don't count? Blackberries neither? Phones running Windows Mobile weren't really smartphones? Let me guess - nothing that wasn't an iPhone counts?

[toraway]

True, I would never argue the iPhone wasn't a transformational step-up in usability that made smartphones a mainstream device category thanks to the App Store and slab screen with multi-touch.

But at the same time.... I had been doing nearly everything the iPhone could do in terms of raw functionality (plus plenty of stuff that took 1+ years to land on iPhones) on multiple different Windows Mobile and Palm smartphones pre-iPhone.

Saying pre-iPhone smartphones don't count because "ugly nerdphone with gross keyboard" is just as ridiculous as a "iPhone was overhyped and no better than existing smartphones" claim.

Apple created a device category within smartphones that then consumed and became what we now think of as a "smartphone" after iPhone and Android together strangled the first movers.

Like, the famous Steve Jobs "an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator" line was just listing standard smartphone features by that point. More or less the definition of a smartphone in fact.

[gambiting]

Agreed. To add to this - saying that iPhones were the first version of smartphones that people actually wanted is silly - there was clearly a huge demand for these kinds of devices by the time iPhone came out.

[stouset]

None of these were more than a blip in the market. Nothing today even remotely resembles these devices, inherits design language from them, or points back in any way to them. They are historical dead ends and nearly irrelevant.

Meanwhile the majority of people on earth own one or multiple devices that are more or less clones of the original iPhone, only faster, larger, thinner, and exponentially more capable.

[gambiting]

Honest question - were you actually an adult using smartphones when the first iPhone came out? Or are you basing your opinion on what you read on the internet?

Because by the time of the iPhone coming out everyone j knew had a Blackberry or some internet connected Nokia slider - the iPhone was significantly less capable than either of those. And yeah, both Nokia and Blackberry screwed the pooch. But again, pretending like smartphones didn't exist or that they were a "blip in the market" is intellectually dishonest, or like I said - based on what you read not based on actual lived experience. Unless you live in the US iPhones were a curiosity for years, a status symbol.

[stouset]

Yes, I was an adult during all of this.

BlackBerrys were popular amongst business users, but there were 85 million of those devices in circulation across the globe at their absolute peak. There are currently 8 billion smartphones worldwide, and virtually all of them are descendants of the iPhone form factor and multitouch input paradigm. BlackBerrys were barely Internet devices as we know them today; they did technically have a browser, but it was minimally functional and they were mostly considered email machines. Unlike the original iPhone, they would be virtually unrecognizable to someone today as equivalent to what we carry around in our pockets.

In less time than it took RIM to develop the BlackBerry and reach 85 million users, Apple took a niche device category and completely transformed it into something that spread to the overwhelming majority of the human population on the planet.

Your position is like saying well actually the modern bicycle was actually invented by whomever created the penny farthing. Yes it had two wheels, yes it existed before the safety bicycle. But they were a novelty until the safety bicycle was invented, and every bicycle in circulation today owes its design to that very first one.