What if phones had been perfectly square-shaped up until now? Would the current iPhone lose points for not being phone-like enough? Of course not - it needs to be taken on its own merits. Good design is about looking at function and then boiling the form down to its most basic constituents.
Again, this is not about "points." It's not a mathematical calculation. Good design is not something that can be reduced to an algorithm or simplistic precepts like "look at function and then boil the form down to its most basic constituents." Design is not like engineering; it's not simply about accomplishing a task, but about doing it with style. In that sense it is very much an art, and like all arts it is about evoking a response -- an emotional response -- in the audience (in this case the consumer). Such responses are necessarily informed by culture, by expectation, by prejudices and whims.
Design cannot be entirely logical because emotion is not logical. What makes the design of the iPhone brilliant, what sets it apart from all its competitors, is not just that it works...it's that it does so, for lack of a better word, beautifully. That is something that simply cannot be quantified.
Please do not make the mistake of believing that this is a matter simply of my preferring the design I am familiar with, an unwillingness to change. When the iPhone first came out it had a design unlike anything I had ever seen, unlike any phone I had ever owned. And yet my instant reaction was that it was beautiful. I wanted it. It just looked
right, though I had no benchmark to measure it against. Your design, on the other hand, had exactly the opposite effect. My instant reaction was that it was ugly. It looked wrong. And I most certainly did
not want it.
What is it in the proportions of the iPhone which make it beautiful while your admittedly similar design is not? I do not know. I don't think it is anything that can even really be defined. But that indefinable quality undoubtedly exists, whether you wish to admit it or not; and, however brilliant your design from a functional standpoint, it is that quality which it lacks.
