No.
Only Palm and its licenees created credible touch devices.
But these were quite different than the iPhone. They used resistive, single-point touch screens that required a stylus and/or physical keyboard for all but the simplest operations. But at least they actually created an OS an applications that were designed for (limited) touch.
There were other devices, but the touch was a gimmick at best because it made the devices harder, not easier to use because they didn't bother creating UIs designed for touch.
The iPhone was the first touch device where fingers on screen were the primary (nearly the only) input device where the device had any level of usability, much less an entire UI system designed to optimize that kind of input.
Incorrect. Palm OS was designed around this ethos. While it shipped with a standard plastic stylus as it's 'primary' form of input and it wasn't capactive, Palm devices were capable fo working by finger input and early as Palm Pilots had software keyboards. Palm Pilots also featured very little in the way of physical buttons. some having only a power button, volume control and a home button or two. Palm OS was heavily featured OS on many Palm and Compaq PDA's and early smartphones before Apple entered the market. Palm was creating these devices for years before Apple entered the mobile market.
If you think the market was moving in that direction before the iPhone, go back a read what Apple's competitors were saying about it. They pretty much universally panned and dismissed the way its touch screen worked. Only after a few years of watching the iPhone eat their lunch did they change their tune.
we will never know this because the iphone did happen and it was market changing. Nobody should be doubting that. I'm not talking about Apples affect on the market. All i'm talking about was that Apple was not this tech company that invented everything in some vacuum of space with no influence from others. Yet, whenever you say this, it's immediate "no, apple invented the smartphone, without them we'd never have what we have today!". which is fundamentally a stupid thing to say. heck, if Apple didnt come out with the iphone, maybe we would have skipped touch devices entirely and gone to brain implants? you dont know. I dont know, nobody knows... but to downplay that other companies werne't also working towards the same sort of device is pure ignorance and fanboyishness.
DO I think that Google had a "Gotcha" moment when the iphone was released. Yes I do.
But they did not actually go in a differetn direction at all. They went in the same direction the market was going towards (as someone who used a few smartphones before the iphone came out and saw a move towards more screen, less button). What they did was create a package that was not just easy to use, but fun to use and looked great doing it. its' the same thing they did with the MP3 player market years before. take a "geeky" product that most people wouldn't be caught dead carrying around and make the masses WANT it.
to that. Apple is truly the market leader.
Apple isn't perfect but give them credit where it's due. They went in a different direction than everyone else and everyone else was forced to follow.
