[bennythomsson]

It goes on.

> the new standard that companies like Samsung and Google would clone the same way they cloned the hardware and software design of the iPhone.

That's misrepresenting history in ways it's not even funny.

Stopped reading at that point. The article took too long to even sketch it's main point anyway.

[scosman]

I get not loving the "Apple invented everything" mantra some people have, but the iPhone genuinely redefined the smart phone category. The industry has 100% coalesced on the model invented by Apple. Nothing like this existed as a full package before the iPhone and now are almost universal:

- No physical keyboard + touch keyboard

- Modern OS kernel (not embedded specific kernel)

- Desktop browser engine

- Capacitive touchscreen + finger instead of stylus - one or two phones had capTouch before, but they were far from standard, and they still had physical keyboards for typing

- Vertical by default orientation

- Short 1 day battery life in favour of more power/features (weird to list, but was a bold move everyone mocked then followed)

They totally took out the existing market (Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, a variety of OEM OSs). Android succeeded but came after, still had keyboards on its flagships the years after iPhone came out (G1, Droid), and took these design cues from iPhone.

The Mac GUI with mouse+keyboard+windows was also huge. Admittedly not first to invent it (Xerox PARC), but first to ship it as a package is still hugely impressive. Few people commercialize a new product before it existed in some lab.

[gamblor956]

- No physical keyboard + touch keyboard (Windows Mobile had this first)

- Modern OS kernel (not embedded specific kernel) (Blackberry had this first)

- Desktop browser engine (iOS didn't have a "desktop" browser engine, it had a stripped-down mobile browser engine. But on this note, Windows Mobile did support desktop browser engines.)

- Capacitive touchscreen + finger instead of stylus - one or two phones had capTouch before, but they were far from standard, and they still had physical keyboards for typing (LG Prada had the first capacitive touchscreen)

- Vertical by default orientation (Almost every smartphone at this point was vertical by default, with horizontal-by default being the exception.)

- Short 1 day battery life in favour of more power/features (weird to list, but was a bold move everyone mocked then followed) (Windows Mobile had this years before Apple)

Literally everything that Apple is credited for with the iPhone...others had it first. The true genius of the iPhone was the marketing...Apple still gets credit today for "inventing" features that Android phones have had for years (zoom cameras? AI? notes? custom emojies? embedded fingerprint readers? integrated payment?)

Apple has always been the follower: it copies what others have done, and makes minor improvements, then markets the hell out of those minor improvements to make them seem revolutionary.

[Clubber]

IIRC, all the Google/Samsung phones had keyboards because they copied the Blackberry. Once the iPhone was released with the screen keyboard, all the Google phones changed to that.

They didn't clone everything, but they cloned a lot in the early days. Rounded corners was another one. Now it seems like Apple is cloning Google/Samsung more.

[tmzt]

The first versions of Android that the public saw were very similar to the OS on a BlackBerry or Danger HipTop. The G1 even used the same mechanism to deploy the keyboard.

As far as the rounded corners, I remember seeing a reduced Google Reader view of Engadget later that year that had every device looking the same from the top third up. I really wish I had a screenshot.

There is now a lot of cross inspriation and features that are copied in both directions, as well as both implementing the same thing at around the same time (Intelligence and Gemini).

On the Android side, Pixel gets most new features first while Samsung offers their own take. Samsung is generally ahead of their direct competitors in terms of hardware.

[dexterdog]

There were no google phones until 2010 unless you count the HTCDream which was not designed to be used for anything but development.

[n144q]

I started to have doubts about the article as soon as seeing the Samsung Galaxy vs iPhone comparison. The author exaggerates things and rewrites history too much.