Over 5 years, has the iPhone made progress?

[kdarling]

The only progress it has really made is retina display and app store. Those two are game-changers.

The "retina display" was not new. There were Windows Mobile phones with over 300 PPI when the very first iPhone went on sale. E.g. the Toshiba Portege G900 and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

Those phones even used the term "print quality" first, which is why Apple came up with a new marketing term for the same concept. They sure didn't want to say they were the third device in the world with a print quality display

As for the app store, it did bring convenience to iPhone users.

Like many other smartphone users before Apple came along, I had an account with the Handango and GetJar stores.

We were not missing too much. My WM smartphone in 2006 had Google Maps, voice control, medical and notetaking apps, browsing with double-tap zoom (Netfront), weather widgets, TomTom navigation and Slingplayer over 3G.

 

[interrobang]

My point in all that was simply that Apply did not pioneer smartphones as someone erroneously stated earlier in the thread.

And you're getting all worked up over nothing. Nobody ever said that. What was said was...

Well considering Apple pioneered this type of phone, I should say that they've evolved quite nicely. Most people that look at Windows or android platforms are obsessed with better specs such as screen size, LTE, or cameras. The problem is that all of those are rushed and pretty buggy.
[...]

(emphasis added)

And Apple absolutely pioneered the full-screen, web-enabled smartphone.

Big Screen + Decent browser. Just two features. The features that mattered, it turned out. Lots of other phones had lots of other features, but the two features that customers wanted were pioneered by the iPhone. This is what allowed it to succeed. And today, every smartphone has these features.

When you're the first to do something, and everyone else follows you, you're a pioneer.

Qualcomm was a smartphone pioneer. Handspring/Palm was a smartphone pioneer. RIM was a smartphone pioneer. Apple was a smartphone pioneer.

HTC and the other WinMo licensees were not pioneers; they just made nice implementations of features that the actual pioneers (see above) had done first. You're not a pioneer if you don't do anything first.

 

[matttye]

The first phone concentrated on multi-touch, usable touchscreen, usable touchscreen keyboard, intuitive design, etc. instead of features count.

Other phones might have "features" but you need to look through a 100 page, poorly made manual to figure it out.

PS. You could send MMS for FREE through email on the first iPhone. Basically, Apple tried to push people to use the free email (instead of paying for mobile internet price but only get text / MMS)

Perhaps you don't understand that people can send and receive MMS on 2007 iPhone for free.

Feature was there but not well known to the haters.

Going to reply to both of these posts with one post. My network (O2 in the UK) did not have an email-to-mms gateway (I don't know if it does now), so no, there was no way for me to send MMS on the 2007 iPhone. At least not to my friends on O2. Also, I don't want to store a new bit of contact information for everyone in my address book. I already keep phone numbers, I don't want to keep phonenumber@carrier.mms.com for each contact as well.

I agree that apple primarily focused on the intuitiveness of the os and the user experience rather than lots of features, but I also think they deliberately withheld features so they had something to sell in their future phones. Apple knew MMS was an immensely sought after feature, so they decided to make it an iPhone 3G exclusive even though there was absolutely no reason they couldn't have implemented it in the iPhone 1st gen. Clever but pretty shady to their loyal fan base.

They do this every time..withhold certain features like Siri.

 

[mysterioustko]

And you're getting all worked up over nothing. Nobody ever said that. What was said was...

(emphasis added)

And Apple absolutely pioneered the full-screen, web-enabled smartphone.

Big Screen + Decent browser. Just two features. The features that mattered, it turned out. Lots of other phones had lots of other features, but the two features that customers wanted were pioneered by the iPhone. This is what allowed it to succeed. And today, every smartphone has these features.

When you're the first to do something, and everyone else follows you, you're a pioneer.

Qualcomm was a smartphone pioneer. Handspring/Palm was a smartphone pioneer. RIM was a smartphone pioneer. Apple was a smartphone pioneer.

HTC and the other WinMo licensees were not pioneers; they just made nice implementations of features that the actual pioneers (see above) had done first. You're not a pioneer if you don't do anything first.

And Apple did not pioneer that either. There were already phones with 3" or larger screens on the market with capable browsers...more capable than the iphone's browser. Apple marketed a smartphone to a demographic that had not been marketed to previously, THAT is what allowed them to succeed. Most people weren't even aware of smartphones and their capabilities prior to the iphone. Prior to the iphone companies were not targeting the average consumer for smartphone sales.

 

[cynics]

And Apple did not pioneer that either. There were already phones with 3" or larger screens on the market with capable browsers...more capable than the iphone's browser. Apple marketed a smartphone to a demographic that had not been marketed to previously, THAT is what allowed them to succeed. Most people weren't even aware of smartphones and their capabilities prior to the iphone. Prior to the iphone companies were not targeting the average consumer for smartphone sales.

Yep I had a bb a couple years before the iPhone came out. It left me scratching my head when at their claim of reinventing the phone.

Brilliant marketing and at the time apple was still an underdog to the pc. So it was pretty exciting to see them flying off the shelves.

Edit to avoid confusion my bb wasn't full touch screen.

 

[Zcott]

As for the app store, it did bring convenience to iPhone users.

Like many other smartphone users before Apple came along, I had an account with the Handango and GetJar stores.

We were not missing too much. My WM smartphone in 2006 had Google Maps, voice control, medical and notetaking apps, browsing with double-tap zoom (Netfront), weather widgets, TomTom navigation and Slingplayer over 3G.

I used Handango too. It was a bit of a pain. The iPhone's App Store made it simpler and made it a must-have device on every smart phone. In that sense, progress.

 

[kdarling]

I used Handango too. It was a bit of a pain. The iPhone's App Store made it simpler and made it a must-have device on every smart phone. In that sense, progress.

Agreed, although I must say that I often find the Apple App Store to be a bit of a pain, because (unlike Android) it will request a password to install free apps.

(Unless Apple has added a switch to turn that off, and I never noticed?)

When I do that on an iOS device that hasn't been used in a while, then I also get hit with reading a ridiculously long new Apple user agreement. Or it wants to confirm my credit card. Then it won't take my password and I have to reset it. Arrgh. Ha. I take it back... it's not a bit of a pain, it's a huge pain at times

 

[mysterioustko]

Yep I had a bb a couple years before the iPhone came out. It left me scratching my head when at their claim of reinventing the phone.

Brilliant marketing and at the time apple was still an underdog to the pc. So it was pretty exciting to see them flying off the shelves.

Edit to avoid confusion my bb wasn't full touch screen.

Yeah the Qtek 9100 that I had given my mother (purchased 3 years before the iphone came out) was a more capable device than the original iphone.

Agreed, although I must say that I often find the Apple App Store to be a bit of a pain, because (unlike Android) it will request a password to install free apps.

(Unless Apple has added a switch to turn that off, and I never noticed?)

When I do that on an iOS device that hasn't been used in a while, then I also get hit with reading a ridiculously long new Apple user agreement. Or it wants to confirm my credit card. Then it won't take my password and I have to reset it. Arrgh. Ha. I take it back... it's not a bit of a pain, it's a huge pain at times

I find that annoying too. I don't understand why they require a password for free apps. It's irritating to me. Another irritation I have with the iPhone is the keyboard. I hate how it displays capital letters all the time. So when i'm typing and I want a capital letter, often times I think it's going to be capital since that's what I see, but then it outputs a lowercase letter. I don't understand why they don't do it the way it's done on other platforms where the keyboard shows the case it's in (when in lower case the letters on the keyboard are lower case and vice versa).