True, it doesn't show us the details, but it's a task manager nevertheless, since it can be used to close misbehaving apps and/or apps we think are using resources in the background. Apple says so:
Right, but on a traditional multi-tasking computer the user constantly has to close even well-behaving applications or else the multitude of running apps will use up all recourses. That's why Apple developed a new Process Model for OS X 10.7 Lion. Please read this page:
John Siracusa Review - OS X Lion: Process Model
The difference between iOS and OS X is that things like Automatic Termination, Autosave and Document Restore aren't opt-in on iOS. That's how all iOS apps must work. At any time by the push of a home button the app must be ready to be suspended and later terminated without losing any data or unfinished operations. And it must preserve its state to pick up where you left. It just works, because there is technology which makes everything work automatically. We so easily forget how it was when you could quit an application before saving your files and losing all your work. Smartphone users don't need to worry about that anymore.
When Jobs said, "If you see a task manager they blew it", what he really meant was "If you know it's a task manager, they blew it." Apple's problem was that their Home button was originally their single task killer, but that wonderfully simple hidden process reset method would not work with actual multitasking.
False, it was actually a huge innovation that iOS is predominantly a single-tasking OS. That's what made it all work on such limited hardware resources. With split screen multitasking on iPad it's now effectively a dual-tasking OS, but still not triple-tasking. There are a few exceptions like background audio multitasking and picture in picture video multitasking, but for the main part only system processes can run at the same time.
You seem to want to vaguely define a smartphone as one that is easier to use, whatever that means. Heck, today's iPhone with its hidden gestures might well have been seen as _not_ so easy to use back in 2007.
Not just easier, but easy enough that a user without any knowledge about computers will be able to use the device without ever running into any problems, given all apps follow the rules of the OS. That's a smartphone in a nutshell. Yes iOS has a problem with hidden gestures, but that's what 3D Touch was developed for, to be a kind of right-click alternative to normal tapping.
Easiness is not what defines a smartphone. If it were, then the iPhone's inability to do certain things as easily as you can on other smartphones, would lower its rank to a feature phone by your definition.
I'm talking easier by a magnitude, not by a little. And that includes the system as a whole, not just certain aspects of it. If Android was truly easier than iOS, than one couldn't write headlines like this:
Android’s back button is still a ball of confusion and inconsistency
But yes, if we start using the term smartphone for something that is substantially different from the smartphones of today, lets say Siri becomes a true AI and everything is controlled by voice commands, than the rank of current smartphones will be lowered to deafphones. And the device who started this development will be the new first smartphone with all inventor credentials.
In any case, let's save this for its own thread, instead of derailing this one.
Oh yes, the iPhone SE. The best small phone from the company who invented the smartphone. Power button on top, no protruding camera, useable with one hand. This is what's the closest to the original iPhone concept and therefore I love it.
