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Comment by andyking | Hacker News Reader

Why is this "iPhone-like"? Every basic mobile phone I've owned since the internet arrived on mobiles has had this functionality when entering PINs and passwords.

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A large number of people have iPhones, relative to other phones on which web browsing is usable. Also, the iPhone is the first phone worth using for browsing the web, for many people. It's nothing about which to be upset. It is simply a way for the author to easily convey the goal of the article in the title.

I don't recall see this functionality in my one previous 'smart phone' (a Treo 650), but perhaps my memory has failed me.

I have a Treo 650 right now, and it does have this functionality. Even though web browsing on the old Treos is pretty dismal, the older smartphones still set up a lot of the groundwork that the iPhone needed to be successful. And indeed, the iPhone has made a lot of breakthroughs in the smartphone world, but it still bothers me when it gets credit for features borrowed from its predecessors.

The iPhone is doing it kind of unnecessarily since it has a (virtual) QWERTY keyboard. It is more of a necessity for phones with "normal" keypads because it is hard to memorize the multitap sequences (especially when there can be 10 characters per key).

If I recall correctly, iPhone OS 1.x didn't reveal the last character. I remember not being to crazy about it when they changed it in 2.0.

A lot of people who have iPhones never used data on other phones and thus describe everything as iPhone like.

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