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Wanted797

macrumors 68000
Oct 28, 2011
1,715
3,592
Australia
I was not much of an Apple fan 10 years ago, but thought the iPhone looked really cool. In Australia we never got the iPhone 2G. The moment I realised it was something was when I was looking at the iPhone 3G a year later. I was comparing to the blackberry at the time. I still remember being a the phone store using the blackberry then the iPhone and I knew straight away the iPhone was the winner. Had one ever since.
 
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Smartass

macrumors 65816
Dec 18, 2012
1,450
1,701
This phone was a gift from god himself. I remember bit**ing to and whining to everyone how Nokias are overrated and how their UI is a total garbage, and everybody was like "what? No way, Nokias are the best!". And then the iPhone came and people finally saw what a good phone should look and have. Minus the camera quality - but let's be honest, general camera quality back then was crap anyways.
 
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eventailapp

macrumors member
Jan 7, 2016
65
14
Back then I was quite an apple hater so I was unimpressed by the iPhone and joined the naysayer crowd. Mainly because of the price. After a while I was watching the releases and got major iPod touch envy, finally I got my first iPhone when the 4 got out. The retina display was what made me cave. And it was a truly amazing experience.
 

zedsdead

macrumors 68040
Jun 20, 2007
3,403
1,147
#16 in line, Roosevelt field mall, NY. 12 hours baby!

I went home and activated it and then ran to a family party. Everyone was amazed. Whole family started buying them within 2 generations of the iPhone.
 
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nightcap965

macrumors 6502a
Feb 11, 2004
726
863
Cape Cod
The Unindicted Co-Conspirator and I stood on queue for this on June 29,2007. I remember the Apple employees coming down the line, offering to let us handle the iPhone. I remember how substantial and solid it felt - not a cheap piece of plastic, but glass and metal. To hold it was to lust after it. The Unindicted Co-Conspirator, being sensible and thrifty, said that her flip phone was perfectly adequate, thank you, so we finally went home with only one.

That evening, as I played with my new iPhone, the Unindicted Co-Conspirator discovered that a terrible mistake had been made. Next morning, we were back in line at the Apple store to buy her one, too.

We've been an iPhone family since.
 
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mantan

macrumors 68000
Nov 2, 2009
1,743
1,041
DFW
As others have said, yes, they existed. Take a look at the iPhone announcement. Steve Jobs even showed off a few to demonstrate how awful they were.

Also as to "people in most countries." The truth is before the iPhone you could travel the world and it was the U.S. that was stuck with boring cellphones. In Europe, parts of Asia, Australia you'd come across the most amazing -- for there time -- phones. The reason they never came to the U.S. is because the cell cos, not consumers, decided which phones would be sold here, and what software would go on it. Apple broke up that "conspiracy."
[doublepost=1498742733][/doublepost]

You agree in false narratives then. iPhone was not the first smartphone.

Very true. My neighbor worked for Nokia and always had these really cool phones. While they weren't as cool as what the iPhone was, they blew away the majority of phones sold in the US. But for regular customers, the Nokia 'smartphones cost a arm and a leg (no subsidies and Americans hadn't gotten in the mindset of paying $700 for a phone) and didn't have the apps/functionality that made the iPhone successful.
 

B4U

macrumors 68040
Oct 11, 2012
3,566
3,985
Undisclosed location
I had used S60, Pocket PC, Palm etc. extensively prior to the iPhone. They are totally not in the same league. Installing apps to the Symbian system was a complete joke.
[doublepost=1498802734][/doublepost]
Even for a DSLR you need to switch to manual mode with "shutter cards" to take good firework photos. This is not the problem of the camera on the iPhone.
Not true.
I was not expecting perfect shots, but at least be able to capture something.
The iPhone was not up to par for such low standard while my other phone from Sony was able to capture the fireworks while using its smart setting.
 

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
No, no. All Jobs really did with the iPhone was give us a Stocks app that was undeletable.

Right. That explains why the iOS App Store grew into the biggest collection of apps ever and a gold mine for developers with good (and sometimes bad) ideas. If anything Jobs helped bring forth a phone that helped to foster a marketplace so open that even fart apps proliferated for a time.
 

kdarling

macrumors P6
As others have said, yes, they existed. Take a look at the iPhone announcement. Steve Jobs even showed off a few to demonstrate how awful they were.

Yep, but notice that he didn't show any touch phones :). Which is why a lot of newbies still mistakenly think there were none, even though even Samsung had sold an all touch phone with fingertip scrolling in Korea the year before! (The one at upper right below.)

touch_evolution.png


Granted, he was showing off how much frontal space a physical keyboard took on some models, as an argument for a software keyboard doing the same thing when it appeared. Go figure.

However, he totally avoided showing touch phones with slide out keyboards, which were in a way the best of both worlds, by not covering any part of the display at all when in use.

I remember thinking that it all comes down to how well multi-touch works in practice. The resistive touch screens of the time were horrible to use, inaccurate and unresponsive. I was hooked as soon as I tried the phone in person.

I think you mean capacitive touch screens. There are such things as multitouch resistive screens. In fact, there is now at least one model which is so sensitive, it can even discern the different hairs in a paint brush! Imagine how useful that would be to an artist.

Even in 2006 though, there were resistive screens that felt almost (but not quite) as nice as capacitive. I had one phone where it only took a feather touch for strokes to register.

Apple didn't invent mult-touch, they bought the company, FingerWorks, who invented it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks

FingerWorks did not invent multi-touch. In fact, if you read the founder's 1999 thesis, it contains tons of references back to such things in the 1980s. For example, this section on his page 39:

"Rubine [129, 130] reports seeing another multi-touch tablet demonstrated at AT&T in 1988 (note:invented in 1983) by Robert Boie which could detect all ten fingers. It boasted a 30-39 fps frame rate and resolution of 1 mil (.025 mm) in lateral position and 10 bits in pressure. Possibly it measured sensor capacitance with the synchronous detection technology in a 1995 patent by Boie et al. [17] that briefly mentions multi-touch tablets as an application." - Westerman thesis

Or if you're in a rush, just read Bill Buxton's piece on multi-touch history. And here's an abbreviated chart:

multitouch_history.png



This is why some of us old timers hang around here. Factual history is often being lost to internet myths.

I remember when it was just a rumor that they were working on a smartphone and everyone wanted to know what it would even look like.
I would check this site for any news or to see if I could finally get a peek at the iPhone but the closest we got were just mockups.
The mockups got pretty ridiculous by the way with everyone thinking that it would likely look like an iPod but with a numpad as well.

Some of the rumors were pretty good. Like by November 2006, we had heard from China sources that Foxconn was contracted to build the new device, which everyone was already calling the "iPhone".

And yes, while like 98% of the fan mockups were mashups of iPods and phones (which almost happened, too!), a few came amazingly close to the final design (which is yet more evidence that Apple did not invent the basic shape that they sued Samsung over). Here's two of the best fan concepts from 2006:

iphone_concept2.png


iphone_concept1.png
 
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LordVic

Cancelled
Sep 7, 2011
5,938
12,458
This is why some of us old timers hang around here. Factual history is often being lost to internet myths.

the amount of revisionist history is staggering.

No technology is created in a vacuum. Apple didn't wake up one day and invent. Apple didn't one day wake up and completely invent every single circuit and idea behind the iPhone. it was a product that was years in process.

What Apple did, was take all sorts of different, pre-existing technologies, and make it cool. and make it into a very very good product that offered far greater appeal and reach than many of the existing devices using similar technologies.

Apple didn't invent the touchscreen
Apple didn't invent the modems (WiFi, Cellular or even BT) in a handheld device
Apple didn't invent the materials they used to build the iPhone.
They didn't invent the glass (COrning)
They didn't invent the silicon (ARM CPU's, even to this day, while they've made a tremendous CPU, it's still an arm licensed product built on the foundations of ARM), nor did they invent any of the processes for creating and implementing CPU's in phones


if you go through the entire list of "200 innovations" apple claimed, you'll see that all of them have prior "art". Where at some point in history, it was either done before, or had a previous version of the technology.

as I said, what Apple did, was take all of those technologies, and come up with a consumer friendly, and easy to use device. It was their exact same M.O. with the iPod lineup. And it was the same way they approached the iPad.

But becvause Apple likes to boast in very carefully crafted words, they were able to manipulate a lot of their fans to believe they were first and they invented everything ("And boy did we patent it!" was Job's famous quote about the iPhone to mislead fans).
 
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TimUSCA

macrumors 6502a
Mar 17, 2006
701
1,539
Aiken, SC
Dude, I had every Treo they aver made, and even the Kyocera phone, and neither was smart. They were primitive ancestors, just like cromagnon was to mankind, but they were not smartphones any more than cromag was human. iPhone was the first real smartphone. Any contrary claim is semantic hogwash.
[doublepost=1498807104][/doublepost]
You must be a very sophisticated person to care so little about such petty things. I'm awfully impressed.
Please tell me how it was "different" any more than iPhone OS 1 was to iOS 10. Obviously things get better over the years. But it was a phone that allowed you to type and install apps. It was a smartphone by any definition... except yours, apparently.
 

vvs14

macrumors 6502
Sep 16, 2012
258
799
NY
Dude, I had every Treo they aver made, and even the Kyocera phone, and neither was smart. They were primitive ancestors, just like cromagnon was to mankind, but they were not smartphones any more than cromag was human. iPhone was the first real smartphone. Any contrary claim is semantic hogwash.
[doublepost=1498807104][/doublepost]
You must be a very sophisticated person to care so little about such petty things. I'm awfully impressed.
I care about little things. Just not paper bags.
 

mudflap

macrumors 6502a
Aug 24, 2007
532
983
Chicago
This was the smartphone I owned when the iPhone was announced. It was the most advanced and arguably the best smartphone available at the time.

And it SUCKED.


1u5T7H3Ty1.jpg
 
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ateslik

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2008
401
523
I remember coming home with my first iPhone. My trusty Motorola Razor flip phone that I used for two years sat on the table. And the difference was staggering. It was a leap. Over the span of a lunchtime I went from this clunky old incapable device to this new magical incredibly capable device. In short, it felt like I moved into the future.

The only other product that has given me that same sensation was a test drive in a Tesla. I remember walking down the street after the test drive and seeing all the gas cars. They all felt like flip phones.
 

xitongzou

macrumors member
Aug 7, 2013
98
247
Apple revolutionized "the phone" not the smartphone until iPhone3/3GS!

There is a reason why the original was NOT called a smartphone at launch! NO app store thus no way to fully add to the launching configuration - no SMS, no MMS, just to name a few. Many of us are old enough to have used VERY powerful smartphone systems that long predated the iPhone. Just cause we live in N.America, doesn't mean we're idiots

S60 - Symbian OS base from Nokia
UIQ - Symbina OS base from China and used by SonyEricsson and Motorola (they also used Java based smartphones)
Windows Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone Edition

There were a LOT more player in the game that Apple was VERY careful not to announce - specifically ANY Windows based smartphone due to the still locked in stock share investment from Bill Gates.

HTC - originally an OEM think HonHai or Foxconn
Nokia
BlackBerry
Danger Inc- yes the SideKick (Ghetto BlackBerry) was a smartphone lol

Yup, its true I also had old Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile phones. Believe it or not those were more powerful than the first generation iPhone. The UI wasn't as great, but it did have more functionality at the time due to the lack of an app store. At that time, thousands of Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian apps existed and there was mobile applications of almost everything. It was harder to install? I guess, remember ActiveSync? but hey, those palm devices and pocket pcs lasted for days. I actually still have my Palm TX and an HP iPAQ, from 10 years ago, and they still hold a charge well and still last for days on end. if you were going somewhere without electricity, take those instead of the modern day smartphones!
[doublepost=1498845201][/doublepost]
This was the smartphone I owned when the iPhone was announced. It was the most advanced and arguably the best smartphone available at the time.

And it SUCKED.


1u5T7H3Ty1.jpg

I think one of the things I will miss about pre-iphone phones were how unique they looked. You had phones that flipped, transformed, slid (sometimes in 2 or more ways), there was some phones that swiveled in a circle, rotated, etc. They were cool and unique. What were the chances of someone having the same phone as you back then? Now everyone and their grandma carries an iPhone or Galaxy. Now every phone is a giant black slab. Its really boring, to say the least. plus - cellphone charms! People (especially in Asia) liked to customize their phones with cellphone charms. Now that's gone away and replaced with smarphone cases - which isn't as cool IMO. Nokia and HTC had some of the coolest designs.

5tZ3J4oaqZ.jpg
 
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Rmonster

macrumors member
Oct 19, 2015
56
20
Havering, UK
Went from a Nextel i870 to the original iPhone and never looked back. 10PM launch day I was able to walk in and walk out.

I was only 15 years old with my mom's debit card. I'll never forget that night or how the phone changed the game for me and everyone else.

Great post & that means you're still only 25? you lucky so & so :)
 

admob71

Suspended
Feb 13, 2014
903
538
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND.
I had used S60, Pocket PC, Palm etc. extensively prior to the iPhone. They are totally not in the same league. Installing apps to the Symbian system was a complete joke.
[doublepost=1498802734][/doublepost]
.
Explain to us then how easy it was to Install apps onto the original iPhone dumbphone. First rule of being a smartphone is the ability to add 3rd party apps. It kinda sacked in that regard. It was no more than a feature phone with a fancy touch screen. Let's not rewrite history...
 

jasonklee

Suspended
Dec 7, 2007
623
746
Right. That explains why the iOS App Store grew into the biggest collection of apps ever and a gold mine for developers with good (and sometimes bad) ideas. If anything Jobs helped bring forth a phone that helped to foster a marketplace so open that even fart apps proliferated for a time.

Nah, I prefer being disingenous and going after soft-target posters pretending that I'm invoking some history when really I'm just peacocking and being biased.
 
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norbinhouston

macrumors 6502
Oct 14, 2011
465
767
Houston
Explain to us then how easy it was to Install apps onto the original iPhone dumbphone. First rule of being a smartphone is the ability to add 3rd party apps. It kinda sacked in that regard. It was no more than a feature phone with a fancy touch screen. Let's not rewrite history...

Was this rule written by you? lol. You haters can try to belittle the iPhone you want, history says otherwise. Must really tear you guys up inside. Keep posting if it makes you feel better!
 
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