But the Newton, Note 7, Mobile ME and iPhone 4 paved the way towards better smartphones. The Newton (and the Knowledge Navigator video before that) teased what a smartphone could be like, but was a decade ahead of its time. The Galaxy Note series showed that a lot of people wanted much bigger phones; at the time, a contemporary iPhone was 3.5 inches, when the Note was 5.3. By now, the general-purpose iPhone 13 is 6.1 inches. Mobile Me had some right ideas, but presumably launched prematurely. So they rebranded iTools, .mac, Mobile Me yet again, this time into iCloud. The iPhone 4 was a big leap, introducing among other things the Retina Display, which is now table stakes for any $150 Android smartphone.
Foldable phones… might show us a future as well, but I'm not so sure about that.