iPhone Revolution Debate

You miss the entire point about why the iPhone was revolutionary. Yes, there were other touchscreen devices (mostly capacitive and plastic). There were fundamental rethinking of the hardware internally which hadn't been done before. However, it was about the software. The software on the iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of anything that existed. It made the experience fun, beautiful and intuitive which was not how smartphones were previously.

When the iPhone came out, it was pretty much identical to the already popular iPod Touch, but with a phone included. It was a very obvious next step for Apple to take, although I'm sure Apple had planned to launch the iPod Touch as an intermediate step to a phone.The original iPod was not all that much different from other MP3 players at the time, it simply had great design (both from a UX and aesthetic perspective). Similarly, the iPod Touch or early iPhones were technologically not muc

The iPhone was definitely not radically new, it was a PDA with a much better touch interface.

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

Before the iPhone and the >500€ price tag, the mobile phone market was like the screen market you describe. Computers were also boring before the iMac. It takes some magic to change that, but it's highly possible that Apple could try it.

This is rewriting history. It was good, but not perfect.Cameras were pretty common on phones, even with video, and the iPhone couldn’t shoot video for years.There was no customized Home Screen which had a lot of hand-wringing.Again, as everyone mentions no apps and that’s huge. Let’s not forget that the backup to apps, websites, weren’t made for mobile yet. Not even apples own website.When the iPhone first came out it was halfway to a luxury feature phone in terms of ability. Until m

The original iPhone did have a niche, more than just did a beautiful elegant implementation. The touchscreen prior to iPhone sucks, and no body used the multi-touch screen yet. With your analogy, iPhone created a rather complex solution (in implementation perspective) to a non-problem (they can use keyboard, touchscreen is a non-problem!). It feels to me to be ignorant to say what original iPhone have done is what everybody else had already done.

The original iPhone was a clear discontinuity: doubled the screen size, relied solely on a capacitive touchscreen and on-screen keyboard. The iOS market that arrived with the iPhone 3G was the first of its kind and a huge hit. The arrival of a serious GPU in the iPhone 3GS likewise changed the game for slick native UIs and all smartphones since have had one. The 800x480 resolution on the Nexus One enabled new kinds of apps (for the first time matching the anglular pixel size available to a pe

There was no usable web browsing on a phone before the iPhone. It had the most advanced browser.There was no iPod level music players on a phone before the iPhone. There were crappy music players you can revisit and compare.Mail apps on phones were crap.Messaging was crap, in tiny little screens.Just a few things.People reviewing and getting the iPhone the time was wowed and think of it like magic. It's people not having it, and dismissing it outhand because it had a touch sc

As a long time palm user, nothing about the iPhone seemed particularly new to me. The interface was almost identical, the form factor was almost identical.The only real upgrades were a cellular modem and a little bit prettier case.Saying apple "invented" modern smartphones is a bit like saying Tesla invented electric cars. No they didn't, they just made a really good one that is very popular.