4 ms·

Samsung made phones long before the iPhone existed.

by ptx 12y ago

soperj 12y ago
Downvoted for being right. Gotta love a zealot.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I didn't downvote either of you, but I didn't respond to either of your comments because they miss the point of mine. Yes, Samsung's been making phones forever. They have not been making smartphones forever. The iPhone was a fundamentally different product category from what phone manufacturers were doing before, requiring that competitors scrap a lot of what they were doing before [1]. And Samsung had a big leg-up in entering that product category by virtue of making many of the screens and chips used in the iPhone. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/1/#milestone3 http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40...
  - cmrdporcupine 12y ago
    http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-sch-i730-verizon-wireless/ http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-sch-i730-verizon-wirele... 2005, 2 years before the iphone. And even called a smartphone in the review. Touch screen keyboardless iphone clone, no. But smartphone, yes. Apple didn't invent this category, they just changed it.
    - hondo77 12y ago
      And it must have sucked or else people would have bought it in iPhone-like numbers. Apple changed the category by figuring it out.
      - TheAnimus 12y ago
        I appreciate it's not a good way to start a conversation, but do you mind my asking how old you are? When the iPhone launched, people like me [0] couldn't really understand it. I was a top five percentile earner in the UK, but still new to that bracket having only recently left uni. I was used to mobile phones being expensive at £400 commitment, £1800 (Uk price with minimum O2 exclusive contract) was unbelievable to me. I made the mistake of looking at the original iPhone, and seeing something that was slow (no 3G), didn't have GPS (recently moved to London, I needed my GPS-maps!) and didn't support any third party applications. It was a joke. It sold buckets loads. The problem was before that mobile apps were a limited affair. We had things like google maps on smartphones, but not much effort went in. We had a few games, but no one was really pushing serious money in that direction. The iPhone became a fashion hit. It was the must have for the 20-something plus who could afford it, it was a status symbol because of price. Everything about it was worse than phones on the market, it took ages to make a call, writing a text took considerably longer. It simply didn't make sense as a phone. However it became a platform. Companies from all walks of life, some who hadn't really bothered to have a website suddenly needed an 'App' for their marketing team to be happy. This created such gravity, people thought that Android would never be able to compete. The internals of it were not really special at all, it was quite slow, the screen resolution awfully poor. It wasn't until the 4 addressed that last major concern I bought one. [0] - http://forums.hexus.net/iphone-ios/110525-iphone-demo.html#post1123168 http://forums.hexus.net/iphone-ios/110525-iphone-demo.html#p...
        cmrdporcupine 12y ago
        I had a Palm Treo many moons before I got a smartphone. It was a good phone, and the 'apps' such as they were on it were "good enough." I never really got the fuss about the iPhone. And I kind of still don't, even though right now that's what I'm doing for work (writing an Objective-C iPhone App)
        nostrademons 12y ago
        That's what "changing a category" looks like. You build something that's worse on dimensions that existing customers care about, but better in areas that new, non-consumers care about. Because it's worse on all the existing metrics of performance, existing incumbents don't believe it's a threat until it's too late to compete. The iPhone wasn't a platform until it had significant consumer adoption anyway...the App Store didn't open until nearly a year after launch. It turns out that being a hot fashion accessory and status symbol is actually more important for consumer adoption than speed of calling or texting.
  - soperj 12y ago
    There were so many smartphones before the iPhone, the main thing that Apple added was touch, which allowed them to have full screens. Not like it wasn't going that way anyway, LG prototyped a phone like that a year before the iphone came out.
    - ptx 12y ago
      Not even that. Sony Ericsson P800 had a touch screen, apps, multitasking (with automatic termination of background tasks, just like Android and iOS) - in 2002! This was using Symbian and their UIQ interface (now dead). Apple did introduce capacitive touch screens though, as far as I know, getting rid of the stylus. And they had a very attractive UI at launch. But not much was really new.
    - simplexion 12y ago
      LG didn't just prototype a phone. They released the LG Prada.

Samsung made phones long before the iPhone existed.

by ptx 12y ago

Samsung made phones long before the iPhone existed.

soperj 12y ago

Downvoted for being right. Gotta love a zealot.

nostrademons 12y ago
I didn't downvote either of you, but I didn't respond to either of your comments because they miss the point of mine. Yes, Samsung's been making phones forever. They have not been making smartphones forever. The iPhone was a fundamentally different product category from what phone manufacturers were doing before, requiring that competitors scrap a lot of what they were doing before [1]. And Samsung had a big leg-up in entering that product category by virtue of making many of the screens and chips used in the iPhone. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/1/#milestone3 http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40...
- cmrdporcupine 12y ago
  http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-sch-i730-verizon-wireless/ http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-sch-i730-verizon-wirele... 2005, 2 years before the iphone. And even called a smartphone in the review. Touch screen keyboardless iphone clone, no. But smartphone, yes. Apple didn't invent this category, they just changed it.
  - hondo77 12y ago
    And it must have sucked or else people would have bought it in iPhone-like numbers. Apple changed the category by figuring it out.
    - TheAnimus 12y ago
      I appreciate it's not a good way to start a conversation, but do you mind my asking how old you are? When the iPhone launched, people like me [0] couldn't really understand it. I was a top five percentile earner in the UK, but still new to that bracket having only recently left uni. I was used to mobile phones being expensive at £400 commitment, £1800 (Uk price with minimum O2 exclusive contract) was unbelievable to me. I made the mistake of looking at the original iPhone, and seeing something that was slow (no 3G), didn't have GPS (recently moved to London, I needed my GPS-maps!) and didn't support any third party applications. It was a joke. It sold buckets loads. The problem was before that mobile apps were a limited affair. We had things like google maps on smartphones, but not much effort went in. We had a few games, but no one was really pushing serious money in that direction. The iPhone became a fashion hit. It was the must have for the 20-something plus who could afford it, it was a status symbol because of price. Everything about it was worse than phones on the market, it took ages to make a call, writing a text took considerably longer. It simply didn't make sense as a phone. However it became a platform. Companies from all walks of life, some who hadn't really bothered to have a website suddenly needed an 'App' for their marketing team to be happy. This created such gravity, people thought that Android would never be able to compete. The internals of it were not really special at all, it was quite slow, the screen resolution awfully poor. It wasn't until the 4 addressed that last major concern I bought one. [0] - http://forums.hexus.net/iphone-ios/110525-iphone-demo.html#post1123168 http://forums.hexus.net/iphone-ios/110525-iphone-demo.html#p...
      - cmrdporcupine 12y ago
        I had a Palm Treo many moons before I got a smartphone. It was a good phone, and the 'apps' such as they were on it were "good enough." I never really got the fuss about the iPhone. And I kind of still don't, even though right now that's what I'm doing for work (writing an Objective-C iPhone App)
      - nostrademons 12y ago
        That's what "changing a category" looks like. You build something that's worse on dimensions that existing customers care about, but better in areas that new, non-consumers care about. Because it's worse on all the existing metrics of performance, existing incumbents don't believe it's a threat until it's too late to compete. The iPhone wasn't a platform until it had significant consumer adoption anyway...the App Store didn't open until nearly a year after launch. It turns out that being a hot fashion accessory and status symbol is actually more important for consumer adoption than speed of calling or texting.
- soperj 12y ago
  There were so many smartphones before the iPhone, the main thing that Apple added was touch, which allowed them to have full screens. Not like it wasn't going that way anyway, LG prototyped a phone like that a year before the iphone came out.
  - ptx 12y ago
    Not even that. Sony Ericsson P800 had a touch screen, apps, multitasking (with automatic termination of background tasks, just like Android and iOS) - in 2002! This was using Symbian and their UIQ interface (now dead). Apple did introduce capacitive touch screens though, as far as I know, getting rid of the stylus. And they had a very attractive UI at launch. But not much was really new.
  - simplexion 12y ago
    LG didn't just prototype a phone. They released the LG Prada.