5 ms·
I would argue that the key differentiator of the first iPhone was screen size. It was the first popular phone where essentially the entire face of the phone was
by tempestn 6y ago
I would argue that the key differentiator of the first iPhone was screen size. It was the first popular phone where essentially the entire face of the phone was dedicated to screen, made possible by a software keyboard. By today's standards it's tiny, but at the time nothing else came close. Trying to do anything on any other phone was impossibly cramped by comparison. Especially using the web, since there was no such thing as a mobile or responsive page then, so you needed a phone with the screen real-estate to use desktop websites. The iPhone was the first phone to make this less than utterly painful.
All that said, I do agree with the general thesis. Evernote has just come up with a huge update of all their apps, having ported them all to Electron to standardize development. The only problem is, they're all brutally slow compared to the native apps that preceded them, and it truly ruins the experience.
- Tepix 6y agoThe iPhone was also the first mobile phone with a touchscreen that worked really well with just your fingers.
- trymas 6y agoAlso AFAIK, iPhone was first mainstream device with multi-touch. At the time I had limited experience, but personally I thought touch screens would never work, because they were slow, imprecise and unresponsive (often worked with special pen only) and then iPhone came with buttery smooth experience and multi-touch. Mind blown.
- baybal2 6y agoNo, HTC was the first one to explore a touch only interface. Even before the HTC Touch, their WinMo version allowed for touch only operation for 3-4 years.
- dagw 6y agoAnd before that there was the Ericsson R380. None of them could really be described as working "really well". If you wanted to you could perhaps argue that the PalmPilot was the first touch only portable device that worked "really well", but that wasn't a phone (and you'll have lots of angry Newton fans telling you that are wrong). Or you could try to make an argument for the Treo, but it wasn't really "touch only". As someone who has used every device mentioned above (and owned at least half of them), I personally feel comfortable calling the iPhone the first phone with a touch only interface that worked "really well"
- baybal2 6y agoThe fact that HTC had a working touch shell, and basic suite of touch only apps for WinMo few years prior to Apple stands there. I will also argue that Apple verbatim copied some of their UI ideas.
- tempestn 6y agoI briefly owned an HTC Titan before the iPhone came out. I returned it after a few days and got a flip phone instead. It was just too painful trying to do anything with the finicky stylus on the tiny screen. And yes, it was slow too.