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Comment by devcpp | Hacker News Reader

Come on, all of this is fairly obvious. Let's say you take a Nokia brick and want to put one touch screen instead of a display and an input panel. What do you do? Something that looks exactly like that. The screen gets larger, the buttons go down and everything else stays the same (yeah, pre-iPhone dumb phones had nice icons in a grid too, remember?).

I mean, you're not going to put the speakers behind, or put fragile sharp corners, or put the buttons on the middle of the screen, just because Apple did something similar!

This is fairly obvious stuff when developing a smart phone out of a dumb phone. Dumb phones looked alike too, just like fridges and microwaves look alike, and that's because these things just make sense.

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The other android handsets released around the same time didn't mimick the look of the iPhone. Take the HTC Desire for instance, it has the same cues you mention but looks very different.

Your point is proven wrong though by the fact that there were phones that looked like the iPhone before the iPhone.

Granted they were rubbish to actually use, but they looked good, just like the iPhone does.

The icons are on a 4x4 grid with 4 additional icons on a dock. There is a contrasting chrome bezel framing the glossy black front elevation of the device. On this elevation, the ear piece is positioned a few millimetres down from the top edge. At the bottom of the elevation their is a single large button that returns the user back to the principal screen. Which phone am I describing?

There is a contrasting chrome bezel framing the glossy black front elevation of the device.

LG Prada.

On this elevation, the ear piece is positioned a few millimetres down from the top edge.

LG Prada.

At the bottom of the elevation their is a single large button that returns the user back to the principal screen.

Ok you got me there, the LG Prada has two large buttons at the bottom of the elevation.

Are you really going to suggest that Apple took LG's Prada concept, which was announced on the 12 December 2006, and copied their version (which looks nothing like the Prada, which was a feature phone) which they announced 28 days later, bearing in mind that this was over the Christmas period? I've worked in manufacturing for a nearly 2 decades and I can assure you that it is actually impossible to do this. Neither the iPhone or the Galaxy S look anything like the LG Prada. Incidentally, the Samsung device was announced over 3 years after the iPhone was initially launched. I'd suggest that the point that you are trying to make is void of any merit whatsoever.

And I'd suggest that you're full of it if you claim the iPhone looks nothing like the LG Prada.

You attempted to describe the iPhone in 4 points. 2 of those points exactly described the LG Prada, the other 2 were very similar (a 2x3 grid instead of a 4x4 grid, 2 large buttons instead of 1 large button).

"You attempted to describe the iPhone in 4 points. 2 of those points exactly described the LG Prada"

I was describing the Galaxy S.

Well that's a pretty disingenuous thing to say, but hey, if the facts don't happen to support your arguments why not just start trolling?

Wow. Calling me a liar and a troll. This from someone that wrote:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5824190

and

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5826888

Both demonstrably false too.

At what point did I call you a liar?

Really? "Well that's a pretty disingenuous thing to say,"

You don't know what disingenuous means then.

Grow up will you. By saying that I was being disingenuous you were saying that I was being insincere about my reply. That is tantamount to calling me a liar without going so far. End of.

It's quite possible to be insincere without lying outright. If I'd meant to call you a liar then that is the word I would have used. I used the word disingenous because that is what I meant.

Please try not to be so hysterical.

You've got to be seen to have the last word. You were wrong. You called and continue to call me names, and you call me hysterical? Troll.

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