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The multi-touch screen and good quality software¹ of the iPhone are what really drew a line in the sand between the old and new "smart" phone worlds. Prior to

The multi-touch screen and good quality software¹ of the iPhone are what really drew a line in the sand between the old and new "smart" phone worlds. Prior to the iPhone I think the closest device to hold a candle to it was the "VisorPhone" (palm clone with an add-on telephony device). https://web.archive.org/web/20010107042900/http://www.handspring.com/company/pr26.jhtml;$sessionid$1D2UZ5QAAATO1QFIAEGCFEWAVAARWIV0 https://web.archive.org/web/20010107042900/http://www.handsp... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Handspring_Prism_Visorphone_Smartphone.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Handspring_Prism_Vis... Close but no cigar - even if the hardware had been a little more integrated they would probably never have pulled off the deal with the telcos that Apple finessed. ¹ - relative to most phone software, whose UI beyond basic telephony was remarkably dire

AnotherGoodName 5y ago
I actually don't think you can say that Apple was first in any single way. We had fullscreen touch smartphones in 2003 long before the iPhone (i had a HTC magician which i thought was pretty good at the time). We had fullscreen touch smartphones with capacitative touchscreens. LG KE850 Prada. The honest truth is that Apple had a strong brand it was able to pivot into with the iPod which was considered a must have device at the time.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Calling the VisorPhone a Plan clone is really doing a disservice to the company behind it. Their history is fairly intertwined with the history of Palm itself.
Closi 5y ago
Absolutely - the impact of the multi-touch screen and 'touch-not-stylus' design really cannot be understated. I think people sometimes forget that there were lots of phones with giant touchscreens before the iPhone - but the problem was that they just weren't very good. Windows Mobile 6 dominated the world, and if they managed to get a capacitive screen and put a sensible UI on it that was actually responsive the marketplace might be very different today!
- t43562 5y ago
  I think you might have wanted to say "cannot be OVERstated" meaning so important that even if you tried to hype it to the max you wouldn't be wrong. Capacitive displays were new, I think, but there was a bias against them at Nokia since you could not operate such screens with gloves on. In a cold country like Finland that was seen as a negative which is why resistive displays were preferred. Oddly though, I almost never use multitouch now - only for photos.
  - dcminter 5y ago
    Pinch-to-zoom was a very visible feature easily demonstrated on photos. Then it was an absolute necessity on websites purely designed for desktop. I hadn't reflected on it before, and it makes sense now everyone targets mobile first, but it is a little surprising how rarely I need it these days.
roywiggins 5y ago
Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29 I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

I actually don't think you can say that Apple was first in any single way. We had fullscreen touch smartphones in 2003 long before the iPhone (i had a HTC magician which i thought was pretty good at the time). We had fullscreen touch smartphones with capacitative touchscreens. LG KE850 Prada. The honest truth is that Apple had a strong brand it was able to pivot into with the iPod which was considered a must have device at the time.

selfhoster11 5y ago

Calling the VisorPhone a Plan clone is really doing a disservice to the company behind it. Their history is fairly intertwined with the history of Palm itself.

Closi 5y ago

Absolutely - the impact of the multi-touch screen and 'touch-not-stylus' design really cannot be understated. I think people sometimes forget that there were lots of phones with giant touchscreens before the iPhone - but the problem was that they just weren't very good. Windows Mobile 6 dominated the world, and if they managed to get a capacitive screen and put a sensible UI on it that was actually responsive the marketplace might be very different today!

t43562 5y ago
I think you might have wanted to say "cannot be OVERstated" meaning so important that even if you tried to hype it to the max you wouldn't be wrong. Capacitive displays were new, I think, but there was a bias against them at Nokia since you could not operate such screens with gloves on. In a cold country like Finland that was seen as a negative which is why resistive displays were preferred. Oddly though, I almost never use multitouch now - only for photos.
- dcminter 5y ago
  Pinch-to-zoom was a very visible feature easily demonstrated on photos. Then it was an absolute necessity on websites purely designed for desktop. I hadn't reflected on it before, and it makes sense now everyone targets mobile first, but it is a little surprising how rarely I need it these days.

roywiggins 5y ago

Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29 I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw