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Linux gaming? Seriously? Apple created THE smartphone. Every phone is an iPhone - Apple proved it and everyone else copied it. And Apple springboarded off thei

Linux gaming? Seriously? Apple created THE smartphone. Every phone is an iPhone - Apple proved it and everyone else copied it. And Apple springboarded off their first-mover advantage into a platform that users really like, and keep coming back to.

pjmlp 7y ago
Nah, maybe for US citzens. We were already using Symbian, Psion and PocketPC based phones. The first phone with hardware support for OpenGL ES was the Nokia N95 released in September 2006, one year before iPhone, with Asphalt as their show game.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  Yeah, but those phones were not very good
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    From whose point of view?
    - ahbyb 7y ago
      I had an N70. It was slow, slow, slow. I had a 5800. It was as slow as the N70 and the resistive screen made me want to cry. I never had the original iPhone but I guess it wasn't as bad.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Other than it just lacked a couple of features every other phone had as standard feature by then. https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphones-missing-features/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphones-missing-features/
      - vezycash 7y ago
        hardware from that era would be slow. If you used an iphone 3 right now it'll be slow guaranteed. Also the first iphones were shiny toys, underpowered and featureless compared to Nseries and Win mobile. If they were that good, Microsoft would have responded immediately.
        prepend 7y ago
        That is not true at all. The iPhone had “amazing” features for the time- a real browser, visual voicemail, photo management, music integration, three way calling, contact integration. Almost all were incremental but really made the functions more useful.
        vezycash 7y ago
        And no apps apart from the built-ins. No copy and paste. Just like a feature phone. Apart from the browser and music courtesy ipod, other smart phones had the remaining features and far more robust. They may not have had fancy UI, but they were more powerful at the time. Even the camera megapixel craze was being led by nokia. You're conflating the current dominance of the iphone for the past. At the time, the best thing about it was the finger only touch screen operation. To the best of my memory, others still needed to fall back to a stylus. Finger usage was a whackamole operation with Nseries and blackerry I used then
        prepend 7y ago
        The first iPhone lacked many features, but it was the best phone at the time for usability. It had massive hype in the press that was probably overblown. But its features were head and shoulders above others at the time. The simple act of making a call was so much easier and efficient, even though it lacked cut and paste. Comparing it to feature phones is really curious because they were completely different markets. I don’t think it’s very useful in describing the iPhone’s success to point out individuals features that were also available in various existing phones.
        htfu 7y ago
        They were very slow. The important thing is they didn't feel sluggish, at all. It took Android phones many many years to even approach feeling as responsive and smooth and indicative of whether input has actually registered as the original iPhone, just scrolling through stuff and navigating around the OS. Tech at the time didn't even try on that front. Featureless yes, but it could do enough to almost right away replace my iPod, Palm, and Nokia. One device instead of three was just too good to pass up.
      - Marazan 7y ago
        You couldn't make a call and browse the Internet at the same time on an iPhone. You couldn't copy and paste text on an iPhone. The camera was worse than any contemporary mid range camera phone.
        prepend 7y ago
        I could make a phone call and browse the interest on my gen1 iPhone. I used ATT as my network. Verizon had the limitation you described, but not all carriers. Copy and paste didn’t work, but it didn’t work on any phone at the time. A few attempted it (eg, win mobile, blackberry) but it really sucked. The camera was quite good and the ability to finally save and share photos and video was revolutionary at the time. I always thought it was funny how much it sucked at the time to try to store and send photos from my BlackJack or Blackberry.
        dijit 7y ago
        Multitasking was added iOS 4, the very first iPhone (Gen1) only supported up to "iPhone OS" 3; and even then, with limited functionality. In fact, the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch (2nd Gen) did not support multi-tasking either, even with iOS4. Apple noted performance issues.
        htfu 7y ago
        Yeah but phone calls and music always did work in the background.
        prepend 7y ago
        Multitasking was in the OS, just not available to web sites and app developers. Jail broken apps had multitasking like screen sharing, WiFi hot spotting and lots of other stuff. It’s a big deal for an OS that doesn’t have multitasking vs doesn’t allow app developers to use.
        cannonedhamster 7y ago
        Copy and paste on Android worked well before iOS, both in ability and timing. I remember being confused my wife couldn't copy and paste with her iPhone when I had a password manager. Copy and paste on iOS took way, way too long. It's interesting how you're claiming you were doing things that didn't exist for the device.
  - sifar 7y ago
    Have you used a Nokia N9 ? Way ahead of its time. + Linux on phone + True multi-tasking with live tiles. + Full web browser. + Turn by turn on device voice navigation. Cannot stress how significant this was. + uncluttered swipe gestures to control the apps/windows. + amazing build. - non replaceable battery. In 2011.
- t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
  Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple created the first mass-market smartphone which was desired by regular consumers (rather than niche buyers).
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    So Europeans and Asians using Symbian, J2ME and Docomo handsets weren't regular consumers?
    - heyoni 7y ago
      Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Because everyone outside US have heard of them. US was the only market where Nokia had troubles selling their Symbian/J2ME phones for example. Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be?
        sbuk 7y ago
        > Because everyone outside US have heard of them. They really haven't. > Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be? At this juncture, yes.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        By all means, is 64 million shippments in 2006, the year before iPhone came to the market enough? https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shipped-worldwide-2006 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shi... Incredible how iOS fanbase tries to rewrite history.

pjmlp 7y ago

Nah, maybe for US citzens. We were already using Symbian, Psion and PocketPC based phones. The first phone with hardware support for OpenGL ES was the Nokia N95 released in September 2006, one year before iPhone, with Asphalt as their show game.

jonplackett 7y ago
Yeah, but those phones were not very good
- pjmlp 7y ago
  From whose point of view?
  - ahbyb 7y ago
    I had an N70. It was slow, slow, slow. I had a 5800. It was as slow as the N70 and the resistive screen made me want to cry. I never had the original iPhone but I guess it wasn't as bad.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Other than it just lacked a couple of features every other phone had as standard feature by then. https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphones-missing-features/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphones-missing-features/
    - vezycash 7y ago
      hardware from that era would be slow. If you used an iphone 3 right now it'll be slow guaranteed. Also the first iphones were shiny toys, underpowered and featureless compared to Nseries and Win mobile. If they were that good, Microsoft would have responded immediately.
      - prepend 7y ago
        That is not true at all. The iPhone had “amazing” features for the time- a real browser, visual voicemail, photo management, music integration, three way calling, contact integration. Almost all were incremental but really made the functions more useful.
        vezycash 7y ago
        And no apps apart from the built-ins. No copy and paste. Just like a feature phone. Apart from the browser and music courtesy ipod, other smart phones had the remaining features and far more robust. They may not have had fancy UI, but they were more powerful at the time. Even the camera megapixel craze was being led by nokia. You're conflating the current dominance of the iphone for the past. At the time, the best thing about it was the finger only touch screen operation. To the best of my memory, others still needed to fall back to a stylus. Finger usage was a whackamole operation with Nseries and blackerry I used then
        prepend 7y ago
        The first iPhone lacked many features, but it was the best phone at the time for usability. It had massive hype in the press that was probably overblown. But its features were head and shoulders above others at the time. The simple act of making a call was so much easier and efficient, even though it lacked cut and paste. Comparing it to feature phones is really curious because they were completely different markets. I don’t think it’s very useful in describing the iPhone’s success to point out individuals features that were also available in various existing phones.
      - htfu 7y ago
        They were very slow. The important thing is they didn't feel sluggish, at all. It took Android phones many many years to even approach feeling as responsive and smooth and indicative of whether input has actually registered as the original iPhone, just scrolling through stuff and navigating around the OS. Tech at the time didn't even try on that front. Featureless yes, but it could do enough to almost right away replace my iPod, Palm, and Nokia. One device instead of three was just too good to pass up.
    - Marazan 7y ago
      You couldn't make a call and browse the Internet at the same time on an iPhone. You couldn't copy and paste text on an iPhone. The camera was worse than any contemporary mid range camera phone.
      - prepend 7y ago
        I could make a phone call and browse the interest on my gen1 iPhone. I used ATT as my network. Verizon had the limitation you described, but not all carriers. Copy and paste didn’t work, but it didn’t work on any phone at the time. A few attempted it (eg, win mobile, blackberry) but it really sucked. The camera was quite good and the ability to finally save and share photos and video was revolutionary at the time. I always thought it was funny how much it sucked at the time to try to store and send photos from my BlackJack or Blackberry.
        dijit 7y ago
        Multitasking was added iOS 4, the very first iPhone (Gen1) only supported up to "iPhone OS" 3; and even then, with limited functionality. In fact, the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch (2nd Gen) did not support multi-tasking either, even with iOS4. Apple noted performance issues.
        htfu 7y ago
        Yeah but phone calls and music always did work in the background.
        prepend 7y ago
        Multitasking was in the OS, just not available to web sites and app developers. Jail broken apps had multitasking like screen sharing, WiFi hot spotting and lots of other stuff. It’s a big deal for an OS that doesn’t have multitasking vs doesn’t allow app developers to use.
        cannonedhamster 7y ago
        Copy and paste on Android worked well before iOS, both in ability and timing. I remember being confused my wife couldn't copy and paste with her iPhone when I had a password manager. Copy and paste on iOS took way, way too long. It's interesting how you're claiming you were doing things that didn't exist for the device.
- sifar 7y ago
  Have you used a Nokia N9 ? Way ahead of its time. + Linux on phone + True multi-tasking with live tiles. + Full web browser. + Turn by turn on device voice navigation. Cannot stress how significant this was. + uncluttered swipe gestures to control the apps/windows. + amazing build. - non replaceable battery. In 2011.
t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple created the first mass-market smartphone which was desired by regular consumers (rather than niche buyers).
- pjmlp 7y ago
  So Europeans and Asians using Symbian, J2ME and Docomo handsets weren't regular consumers?
  - heyoni 7y ago
    Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Because everyone outside US have heard of them. US was the only market where Nokia had troubles selling their Symbian/J2ME phones for example. Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be?
      - sbuk 7y ago
        > Because everyone outside US have heard of them. They really haven't. > Should I start digging market shares figures of feature phones before iPhone came to be? At this juncture, yes.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        By all means, is 64 million shippments in 2006, the year before iPhone came to the market enough? https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shipped-worldwide-2006 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shi... Incredible how iOS fanbase tries to rewrite history.