Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

There are a whole heap of 'un-released' samsung prototypes as part of this legal case too (here just a few versions of one phone from 2006: http://www.groklaw.net/images/Samsung-1.jpg ) - many more variations of other phones where produced the in the same style.

Don't be tricked by the Apple produced image showing the phones that Samsung released before the iPhone - that is not all they (and many other manufacturers) were working on. Motorola A1000 (http://www.heise.de/altcms_bilder/62452/3_hires.jpg ) came out long before the iPhone - and followed many of the same conventions.



The Motorola A1000 didn't really follow the same conventions as the iPhone. For one, it used a stylus, and had 6 face buttons.

The iPhone has one face button. Most Android devices initially had buttons for call-related functionality, though most manufacturers have dropped that for either software buttons in the UI or static capacitive "Buttons" on the bottom of the device. The only similar convention that the Motorola follows as the iPhone is that the touchscreen is the primary input device.


True on many counts but:

A1000 had customisable home screen that could feature the links and apps you wanted to hand, shown as app icons.

It had a stylus but on the whole worked fine with just a finger (better screens just were not affordable at the time)

It allowed for app 'grouping' though not with the snazzy app draws of iOS

It could do 'sliding draw' notifications of things like SMS, offering a preview in the top bar.

---

I'm not saying it was anywhere near as good as an iPhone, but it featured some of the ideas that people try to say that the iPhone did first.

---

On a side note I'm going to have to dig it out, it had some great games on it!


I was talking purely on the hardware, as I'm not familiar with the phone enough to comment on the software. But from that perspective, you definitely are right, a lot of "modern" OS features in for the default iOS and Android shells are in that phone.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: