Some corrections and comments:
Agreed 100%. Pre-iPhone, smartphones were essentially Blackberrys. Post-iPhone, smartphones are all essentially iterations of the iPhone.
Actually, there were a lot of touchscreen phones around. A couple even had WVGA screens with retina displays by the time the iPhone went on sale.
Google paid $12.5 billion to buy Motorola.
Note that included getting $3 billion in Motorola cash reserves, so the end cost was that much less.
Interestingly, Apple paid the same amount per patent for the Nortel batch, as Google did per Motorola patent. The difference is, Google also got a phone and settop box company thrown in.
That is why Google had been trying to enforce its FRAND patents against Apple and Microsoft without going to arbitration to protect Android OEMs.
On the contrary, it was Motorola who suggested arbitration in the recent Apple-v-Motorola FRAND lawsuit in Wisconsin, where Apple claimed Moto was asking too much. Apple said they would abide by the judge's decision as long as it wasn't over $1 per device. The judge decided Apple was not ready to negotiate in good faith, and dismissed Apple's lawsuit with prejudice.
Was two finger scroll really around for a long time?
It was known. As it turns out, the other phonemakers simply ignored that one, and let the person always scroll with one finger. It's far more intuitive than the two finger method, which a lot of people never figure out. Even Apple now has a mode allowing one-finger scroll.
The bounce motion is quite informative and a non-obvious animation GUI animation (to an admittedly lay person).
Bounceback is in the process of being invalidated by the USPTO as an obvious step from other patents. This throws a wrench into the California and other verdicts.
Pinch to zoom is also very intuitive.
Yes, it is. That's why pinch-zoom was first shown in the early 1980s. Apple didn't invent it.
Swipe to go to the next item (page, photo etc.) is also something that did not exist during the mouse, scrollball and single touch era.
Swipe-to-next-item was already used on touchscreen devices in the industrial field, and decades ago in book simulators.
The European Commission just announced that it has "opened a formal investigation ... (about Samsung)... snip
That was over 10 months ago, and no decision is expected from them for months to come. If ever. Other EU groups and courts have already made their own determinations in the meantime.