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Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

Ballmer and others were not wrong to laugh about the iPhone because it was just a bad smartphone compared to what was available at that time for someone that wanted to do more than browse the web. Until iOS 5 and 4S one would be making significant sacrifices when choosing an iPhone.

Thanks to playing their cards right and arrogance and stupidity on part of Nokia they won, but it wasn't always clear it would be like that.

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>Ballmer and others were not wrong to laugh about the iPhone because it was just a bad smartphone compared to what was available at that time for someone that wanted to do more than browse the web.

That's totally untrue. It destroyed everything of the time -- I know, I had smartphones since 2000, Sony stuff, Nokia stuff etc.

Same here, I've been using WinMo for quite a few revisions and prior to that I had two Treos. The iPhone was an excellent smartphone that was as usable, if not more, than the others for day to day use.

It was bad in many ways, but extremely good in (at that time) unexpected ways. I remember I held off from buying the first one when it came out because of the bad things (the camera, for one), but from the moment the iPhone was unveiled I knew I would buy one as soon as these things improved. I think many others thought the same thing.

iPhone 1, the one without appstore and 3G destroyed everything? :) I would say a phone like e90 or P1i let you do much more than the iPhone allowed you to, it was barely smart in any way.

I don't understand why people like to rewrite history. At the behinning the fight wasn't at all decided.

I'm not sure you remember what smartphones were like circa 2007. http://cellphones.techfresh.net/lg-env-smartphone-hits-veriz... I know I do.

I used to have this bad boy http://www.asus.com/Mobile_Phone/P535/ and as hard to believe as it might sound, there is nothing current smart phones can do that it could not.

My iPhone experience started with the 3G. It did everything I had previously used a "smart" phone for, in addition to the tasks I had for my iPod and Palm V: contacts, calendar, appointment alarms, phone calls, music, email, web browsing.

That's pretty much the core of what I still use a smartphone for. My iPhone is sitting here next to me playing me music as it has done all day, keeping me in touch with my partner who is interstate, reminding me that I have to put the bins out tonight, and otherwise staying out of my way.

What else did a smartphone need to do that the iPhone couldn't?

Until the 2008 (3G) here wasn't an app store. If you didn't saw what was possible in a jailbreaked version and belive that Apple will fix some of the biggest problem it actually was a fairly expensive toy.

and there's nothing my MBP can do that a ZX80 couldn't.

I got on board with the 3GS and IOS 3.0. I can't say that your complaints are justified. The web experience was pretty good because you would 'zoom' in on the part of the page you were reading. It had enough memory to run 1 app at a time but each app worked smoothly. I also jail broke mine and was using ssh to login to my home PC while on the bus to work and it was pretty epic at the time. No other phone could do that kind of thing and now I guess the rest is history.

There was no SSH client for Windows Mobile? Or the Nokia N? Or go back even further to the Danger Sidekick? Not saying the iPhone wasn't a smoother experience but other phones could do "that kind of thing".

I also jail broke mine and was using ssh to login to my home PC while on the bus to work and it was pretty epic at the time. No other phone could do that kind of thing

PuTTY has been supported on Nokia phones since 2004: http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/news.html

I didn't use it, but I did have a Python interpreter running on my E65 (with APIs for camera, GPS, calling, etc) before the iPhone 1 was even released.

I used my clamshell feature phone to login to my home pc via ssh. Granted, the typing experience was pretty painful, but it did work. People seem to forget that 'app stores' have been around a lot longer than the iphone. It's just that the earlier versions of app stores, carrier decks, were managed by carriers who cared a lot more about preventing apps from interfering with their business than they did about providing their customers with good, useful apps. And they ran on operating systems that were customized or custom written by carriers who saw them primarily as a marketing tool useful for pushing their more expensive services.

http://www.midpssh.org/

>People seem to forget that 'app stores' have been around a lot longer than the iphone

And they rightly forget them -- they were awful, over-expensive crap. $10 for some BS casual game, $30 for a TODO app etc. And don't get me started on the Java ME crap.

I think that more importantly they were either run by carriers or crippled by carriers.

iPhone changed the whole carrier/manufacturer/customer dynamic for the better (this is coming from a diehard BlackBerry user).

Tell me, which sacrifices did I have to make with iOS 4 and my old iPhone 4? Because I remember jailbreaking, installing SSH servers, custom apps, and stuff like that. It was the most full-featured phone at the time.

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