Comment by p_l | Hacker News Reader

Comment by p_l | Hacker News Reader

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When iPhone arrived in Europe it was disappointment for people who used smartphones. It had few things going for it (better web browser than default IE Mobile on PDAs, better screen than many), and long list of "works worse".

Starting with the basic things that everyone who invested in smartphones at the time wanted, i.e. email, going through hilariously high cost (the reason behind it known only to insiders - Apple was in full rent-seeking mode, and required a portion of your phone bill as payment for being able to use iPhone. Not joking, that's why there were special iPhone-only tarriffs), it lacked physical keyboard, copy&paste, and a bunch of other things. iPhone 2G was also slower at running iOS 1.0 "applications" than higher end Nokia symbian phones (that used the same webkit core in browser).

Symbian devices were well known, and were more commonly considered "smartphones", as "palmphones" generally only got interest from people who really needed the power (a bit of chicken&egg issue).

What is this weird narrative that pre-iPhone smartphones didn't exist in the US, and somehow only Europe and Asia had these "advanced" devices? We had smartphones too. All the negatives you mentioned (no physical keyboard, copy & paste, etc.) were brought up by lots of people when the iPhone was first released. Ultimately it didn't matter, and the iPhone was a breakout hit and every single smartphone on sale today is based on its core design.

Nokia and Sony failure to make an impact on US while the rest of the world was enjoying their Symbian and J2ME handsets.

Man, everybody had blackberrys in the US. It was a huge success. Apple took a risk decision of having a purely touch-based smartphone, and the bet paid awesomely. But by any other aspects, the blackberry was a more useful and powerful device for professionals than the IPhone.

> But by any other aspects, the blackberry was a more useful and powerful device for professionals than the IPhone.

The first iPhone, sure, no arguments there. The whole point of the iPhone was to make smartphones more useable for non-professionals.

"...hilariously high cost..."

In 2007, the Nokia N95 cost $795 while the iPhone cost $600.

Sauce: https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/practical-gadgetry/two-wee...

That's the one time cost for purchase outside of contract... For N95. Not for iPhone, at least not for normal people.

The reality in 2008 is that Apple forbid selling iPhone without contract, with contract requiring special extra Apple tax (we already had "unlimited data" for years by then). So you were paying whatever the telco asked you for the phone, then paid extra to Apple as long as you used the "iPhone tariff" (and you couldn't get it otherwise other than ebay).

Since at least in Poland majority bought the phone as part of the contract, the prices were wildly different. I can't find N95, but business oriented E51 cost me under $70. Without significant impact on monthly fees on the contract. And without paying Apple tax on my phone bill.

BTW, regarding visual voicemail... Little known thing about iOS 1-2 is that the network stack was broken and it wasn't capable of redirecting to voicemail like every other phone. Required special buggy software to get any voicemail for people running iPhones, and at least at Era GSM (present day T-Mobile Poland) it took 3 months from providing iPhone on sales and any voicemail working?

The cost of a phone bundled with a contract bears no relation to the real-world cost. Depending on your monthly payment and length of contract, you could pay $100 or $500 for the same phone.

In some markets, iPhones were bundled with a contract because networks had bidding wars for exclusivity.

From the PoV of someone buying a phone, in that specific time and location, cost of phone without contract was rarely ever known. And the iPhone wasn't sold outside of network with attached plan anyway.

From the PoV of someone working at the network and having the luck to talk with some pretty high up there people... the exclusivity was only for order in which networks got the phone. As in, present-day T-Mobile Poland made a bid to be the first network to have it - but it didn't have any kind of long exclusivity and was soon followed by Orange and Plus (the other two "main" networks). All networks had special iPhone "plans" and the phone wasn't available outside of them, and the only technical difference was that said plans ultimately got the very buggy Visual Voicemail server attached and probably triggered workarounds for call handling bugs.

The Apple tax on the phone bill itself, and making it unavailable outside of contract, were all on Apple. (I think for some time using one outside of approved contract even required jailbreaking, but I can't be sure).

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