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What makes the iPhone different?

J

JesseW6889

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 12, 2010
317
0
So, I got in a patent argument with a friend, and they suggested that the iphone wasn't anything special at its launch. I remember thinking it was a leap forward, but was it?

What benefits/technology (if any) did the original iphone have over other phones of its time?
 
The App Store Makes The iPhone So Special. No competitors are even close with their stores.

Edit; Just noticed you said launch! Like The adverts say the iPhone is the only phone to have an iPod built in, wins it for me every time I hated having to carry around a phone and iPod because the phones music players were so awful.
 
^^^^the Motorola Rokr had an iPod built in.

Holmes093 said:
The App Store Makes The iPhone So Special. No competitors are even close with their stores.
Click to expand...

The app store wasn't around when the iPhone launched in 2007.

I remember watching the keynote and being blown away. There was so much about the iPhone that was ahead of it's time.

Some examples:
The touchscreen
The UI
Pinch to zoom
Visual voicemail

I remember when SJ showed a webpage- the New York Times- it just looked amazing. It looked exactly as it did on the small iPhone screen as it did on my computer screen. When he started navigating the page, it just seemed so right.
 
The innovation was moving the focus in smartphones from specs and features in a bullet list to usability.
It had far fewer capabilities then competing smartphones of the time, but every feature that was included was in a different class in terms of responsiveness and overall design.
 
JesseW6889 said:
So, I got in a patent argument with a friend, and they suggested that the iphone wasn't anything special at its launch. I remember thinking it was a leap forward, but was it?

What benefits/technology (if any) did the original iphone have over other phones of its time?
Click to expand...

I can't imagine how one could lose such an argument. :p

The iPhone completely revolutionized the phone. In fact, if it weren't for the iPhone, i highly doubt we'd be seeing any of this competition. The same goes for the iPad.
We would probably be stuck calling the BlackBerry a smartphone. What a world right?
 
I had the same argument a while back.

The original iPhone got a lot of hate as it was missing a lot of what people traditionally thought made up a "good phone" e.g. Memory card storage, good camera etc etc.

In a time when the big manfacturers at the time brought out phones quicker than Rihanna released singles and competed mainly on specs, the original iPhone turned a lot of this on it's head, it concentrated on few things and did them all excellently:
- Best portable music player
- best mobile phone
- best portable web browser

It didnt get an app store until IOS 2 but had the a GUI and touchscreen years ahead of any competition.

It could be argued it brought new life into the mobile Market, ask any doubters to look at the top spec phones from 6 months before iPhone was announced, then one year afterwards. The whole industry changed faster than it ever had before.

If not for Apple we might still all be using Symbian based nokias (and think RIM made top notch business phones! :p )
 
The original iPhone was more about the total package.
It wasn't the first touchscreen phone, or smartphone or phone with a music player, web browser or any of that.

It was actually a terrible phone (from a calling perspective) and didn't even have 3G data speeds, which was widely available before launch.

It was how Apple put it all together that made it "magical" if you will.
 
Surely said:
^^^^the Motorola Rokr had an iPod built in.
Click to expand...

wow i totally forgot about that phone. i bought one and ended up losing it at school. at the time it was really cool, like an iphone precursor. we've definitely come along way since the rokr thats for sure
 
Surely said:
I remember when SJ showed a webpage- the New York Times- it just looked amazing. It looked exactly as it did on the small iPhone screen as it did on my computer screen.
Click to expand...

Yep, it almost did.

Except that they had to hide the missing Flash section where the NY Times always puts interactive content.

From then until three years after that, Apple always dubbed in static images wherever Flash sections and menus were supposed to show up, so people wouldn't immediately notice that something major was missing. Keynotes and commercials always used those custom Apple-redone pages stored on Apple demo servers.

Even when Jobs decided to deliberately point out the new iPad's lack of flash, Apple's website at first still had iPad demos displaying dubbed in images.
 
kdarling said:
Surely said:
I remember when SJ showed a webpage- the New York Times- it just looked amazing. It looked exactly as it did on the small iPhone screen as it did on my computer screen.
Click to expand...
Except that they had to hide the missing Flash section where the NY Times always puts interactive content.
Click to expand...
Maybe Surely was one of the many users who ran a Flash blocker on his desktop. ;)
In that case I would have looked the same.

Either way, in 2007 the state of Flash was so far out of touch with mobile requirements that it wasn't a really an option.

Again, the iPhone focused on usability, not feature lists. It's mobile browser was unlike anything else available at the time.
 
I thought the iphone was the first touchscreen phone? They argued something about a handspring phone that was popular, I don't remember that. What I do remember is the iphone's touch screen actually working. Were there other touchscreen phones at the time?

Edit: COMPARABLE touchscreen phones
 
Last edited:
JesseW6889 said:
I thought the iphone was the first touchscreen phone? They argued something about a handspring phone that was popular, I don't remember that. What I do remember is the iphone's touch screen actually working. Were there other touchscreen phones at the time?

Edit: COMPARABLE touchscreen phones
Click to expand...

Touchscreens common in 2007. However most UI's were built for stylus input. There was nothing 'like' the iPhone, except for maybe the HTC Touch (skinned WinMo6) or Prada KE850.

Take a look at the best smartphones of 2007:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6600061.html
Funny thing is that iPhone isn't even on the list. Due to it's lack of features, it was hard to consider it a smartphone. But you can't deny that it changed they way we think of phones today.
 
Last edited:
Surely said:
I never implied that they could compete with the iPhone......I just corrected your statement that said the the iPhone was the only phone with an iPod built in. :)
Click to expand...

technically speaking, those phones had an iTunes app built in (with a crappy interface modeled after desktop iTunes to boot)

the iPhone was the first phone to have an MP3 player with that much functionality and ease of use, and of course, the first one to be technically considered an "iPod"
 
dccorona said:
technically speaking, those phones had an iTunes app built in (with a crappy interface modeled after desktop iTunes to boot)

the iPhone was the first phone to have an MP3 player with that much functionality and ease of use, and of course, the first one to be technically considered an "iPod"
Click to expand...

Wasn't there that Nokia phone with a harddrive (can't for the life of me remember the name) that came before the iPhone?

I love my iPhone but part of the reason I held off until the 3GS was that it didn't seem to be as good at doing what it claimed to do as one would hope for, especially for that price. It didn't have cut/copy/paste, multitasking, a decent camera, and reception (from what I've read) left much to be desired. I think the 3GS/iOS 3.0 is where the iPhone became a really great phone.
 
The iPhone was the first smartphone with mail, ipod, internet, app store, itunes, a game center, weather all in one phone.
 
JetBlack7 said:
The iPhone was the first smartphone with mail, ipod, internet, app store, itunes, a game center, weather all in one phone.
Click to expand...

Technically it's still the only phone with the App store (the Apple version at least) and iPod. There were many music phones before the iPhone. I'm not sure that Weather is that big of a point.
 
boss.king said:
Technically it's still the only phone with the App store (the Apple version at least) and iPod. There were many music phones before the iPhone. I'm not sure that Weather is that big of a point.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but there were in previous phones game stores and you could put mp3 files into the phone, but the App Store and Ipod were simplified versions of those in other previous phones.
 
It changed the entire cell smart and feature phone industry. With one phone Apple introduced a phone with a desktop level browser that not only rendered pages as they are on the desktop it rendered them fast, something blackberry browser couldn't even do with its easier WAP rendering. Apple also introduced a touch interface that didn't require a stylus something nearly unheard of up until then, and the interfaces that didn't require stylus were bubbly, big, and simple. iPhone's UI is elegant, modern, and just as simple. Apple introduced a virtual keyboard that didn't involve poking at tiny keys with a stylus. Apple also introduced predictive text based on a virtual keyboard input, a virtual input that accurately guesses the word you mean to type.

Beyond the launch the App Store changed the market even further and was a genius move to get people investing money into iOS keeping a stronghold on their users. Because of this it's difficult to switch to other phone operating systems if they are reliant on several applications they will have to rebuy on the new OS. Even if it in reality would be a small price to pay it is quite the mental lock that will keep people using iOS for a long time to come.
 
Apple was able to tell carriers hands off!

No carrier bloatware.
No carrier blocking/slowing OS updates.

Then comes android handing it all back to them =(
 
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