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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Not really. It was going to happen with or without Apple. The first touchscreen smartphone was in 1992. Microsoft had touchscreen Windows devices from the late 90's through the 00's. Symbian and BlackBerry were things. And the LG Prada which was released before iPhone.

iPhone just did what Apple's good at, taking existing technology and packaging it nicely, but it would have happened with or without them.

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The biggest thing the iPhone did was come up with a user interaction method that made using a mobile computer/phone intuitive.

>Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...

Android was nearly ready to launch as a Blackberry clone when Jobs demoed the iPhone.

> The biggest thing the iPhone did was come up with a user interaction method that made using a mobile computer/phone intuitive.

What is that method you are referring to?

But Apple had a two years leap in front of everyone else shipping a useable touch interface.

I remember the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch screen phone by RIM launching at the same time as the iPhone 3G. No Wifi, slow janky scrolling, no apps (well, sure, if you don't mind downloading some random .jar that have to be recompiled for the custom fork they ran on that device). Felt like a rushed beta.

Meanwhile the iPhone just worked. Smooth scrolling, fast browser especially on Wifi. You could get apps from the AppStore, no friction.

The thing I remember about non-iPhone touchscreens in those days is seeing the little mouse icon jump to where you pressed, and tiny scrollbars. And having to get out the stylus to better hit the targets. And seeing the cross-hatch X-windows background while the phone was booting up. It felt like using a handheld oscilloscope. At least the UI was not done in Tcl/Tk :-)

The reason I left my Treo for the OG iPhone was the data plan. No one could touch that unlimited data at the time. To me that is what sold the iPhone. I don't know that it ever would have taken off if it had been constrained per KB as was popular at the time. Also the data plan was a bit of a requirement considering the first iPhone was all webapps. I was so pissed when I found out it lacked copy and paste.

iPhone's capacitive touchscreen was new and revolutionary. Microsoft had some success in the early 2000s with Windows Mobile but they inexplicably stopped investing into it after 2005. Without Apple it might have taken many more years before the mobile revolution kicked off in earnest.

LG released a capacitive touchscreen phone before Apple by a month. The technology was out there and was always going to get used by someone.

Here's a modern review of the original LG Prada, from the noted iPhone lovers at Android Authority. You be the judge.

https://www.androidauthority.com/lg-prada-1080646/

>The LG Prada was the first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen, but there are reasons why you don't remember it.

Didn't say the iPhone wasn't an improvement on the status quo with regards to UI. All I said is that it didn't invent the form nor the hardware.

In my first post on this thread, I said Apple improved the packaging of smartphones (ie. form, UI, ecosystem).

You must also think Apple invented the notch, fingerprint scanner, capacitive touchscreen phone, music playing device, the desktop GUI and mouse.

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