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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I doubt this thing will get anywhere, but this discussion thread is making me nostalgic about the wild times of smartphone design in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Motorola Droid. HTC Touch. Palm Pre. Nokia N900/N95/N97 and their other crazy form factors. All the different Blackberrys.

Phones were sliding, folding, twisting. Then at some point everyone decided that a glass rectangle was the only way to go and that was it.

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The Palm Pre had the best mobile typing experience I have ever had. I tested a lot of different stuff (Blackberries, various weird looking Nokias), but something about the Palm Pre was just... better. It had the perfect amount of resistance, the keys were well defined and had a nice rubber touch.

webOS in general was amazing. I still prefer it over iOS, especially on tablets.

I feel ya, I used to have one of these:

https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_m600-pictures-1425.ph...

And these:

https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6820-pictures-565.php

Had the N900 and N95 as well. Back then it was easy to have a cool/unique phone because carriers weren't on top of their hardware lineups. Now everything is a boring rounded-corners slate. Even Sony gave up with the squared-edges on their Xperia lineup. I'm optimistic that rollable screens will bring back some real innovation beyond just clam-shells.

Success of the iPhone

there was so much.. variety, and every time I upgraded a phone it was also a changed human-machine interaction with the hardware. Oh exciting times!

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