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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

The LG Prada pre-dates the iPhone and was actually the first phone to have a capacitive touch screen. It had as many buttons as the infringing Samsung devices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada ). This was noticed at the time of the iPhone launch too: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separ...

This is all silly though, Apple wasn't making the argument based on Samsung making a touch based phone. The arguments were on very small "inventions" like the rubber band effect and double tap to zoom. The design patent wasn't based on the fact that it was touch based, but that it looked like the iPhone (in shape and color). A weird thing to be able to patent if you ask me, but hey.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500273-37/apple-v-samsun...

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If you read the jury comments though, they made a single decision based on the overall look and feel of the device, and then applied that decision to all the arguments. Essentially, they felt like Samsung had broadly copied apple's look and feel, therefore apple deserved exclusive ownership of things like rubber band, whether they invented it or not.

I think that was a part of their decision. If Samsung had come forward and said, "ok, this this and this we copied, but that we didn't" I expect they would have gotten a better response. But the blanket denial killed a lot of their credibility.

The LG Prada was a feature-phone with a nicer display. If Samsung had released the Prada in 2008, they would have been at zero risk from retaliation by Apple.

The LG Prada was so bad you had to use 2px scrollbars with your thumb to scroll down a list, like a contact list. It was like using Windows XP on earlier touch devices. I don't think making something like the Prada in 2008 would have helped Samsung's case in any way, because it had none of the things that made the iPhone great, none of the features people copied from the iPhone.

The LG Prada was a complete failure, because your old, classic feature phones like those in clamshell form were MORE usable with their keyboards than the Prada and its really bad touchscreen and bad software. I wanted to go back to a regular phone real fast when I made the mistake of buying a Prada. Not quite the same experience that people have when they buy an iPhone.

Feature phone or not (you have to compare it to the original iPhone which wasn't a smartphone either), it looked a lot like the iPhone. Apple didn't invent touch screen phones, they "just" made them popular. It's a big accomplishment, but they didn't create the segment.

The LG Prada looks a lot like the iPhone ?

That's crazy. I couldn't think of two phones that looked less alike.

The other way around actually since the iPhone came out after it. But yes, if you were sent back in time to 2007 you would notice the similarity. I ran a mobile phone news website at the time, the similarity was definitely talked about (see the Engadget link in my OP).

The original iphone had a clean aluminum casing whereas the prada used generic black plastic casing -- I think people could tell them apart back in 2007. Practically all phones on the market were black. The differences were even bigger if you used either device for more than a minute.

And Apple quickly went to all black... The differences between anything Samsung makes and an iPhone are quite apparent too if you use them for a minute.

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