Apple, Samsung face new iPhone damages trial: U.S. judge

"3G was available in 2006 in the Tacoma-Seattle and Portland areas and down the I-5 corridor between them."

Indeed it was. As a ATT iPhone user I had a strong signal from Seattle to LA, then all the way to Phoenix. Only exception was the most remote areas of the desert where there was probably no signal of any kind. I was quite shocked by that considering all the press about how bad it supposed to be.

Before the iPhone, browsers on cellular phones were dependent on mobile compliant websites, and could not see fully desk-top compliant content.

Another completely untrue statement... Opera and other browsers available on the PPC-6700 were perfectly capable of browsing on non-mobile compliant websites long before the I-phone came out.

And Apple did not invent multi-touch screens... what a joke. All I can say is, just look it up people. I could practically write a novel refuting all of the misinformation being spread right now. Swordmaker is full of it.

If anyone cares to verify Swordmaker’s claim that Apple invented multi-touch and “gestures”... I ask that you look over the following info and links:

“1982 – First Multi-Touch System – Nimish Mehta , University of Toronto

The very first multi-touch system designed for computer input was a frosted glass panel with a camera that detected finger motion. This simple interface, which depended on a camera, allowed for multi-touch picture drawing.

1983 – Pioneer of Rich Gestures – Myron Krueger

Myron Krueger created a vision-based multi-touch system which enabled a rich set of gestures, including ones that were similar to today’s pinch-to-zoom gesture. You can view his hand gestures in this 1988 video. Although his system was vision based, the gestural interaction you see on your mobile phone got its first start on Myron’s system.

1984 – First Multi-Touch Screen – Bob Boie, Bell Labs, Murray Hill NJ

The invention of the first multi-touch screen used a transparent capacitive array of touch sensors overlaid on a CRT. Unlike multi-touch tablets, in which the touch input and visual output are separate from one another, the visual outputs of multi-touch screens are directly beneath the touch sensors.

1992 – Flip Keyboard – Bill Buxton

The multi-touch pad you see on today’s Macbooks had its origins in a multi-touch pad integrated into the bottom of a keyboard.

2001 – Diamond Touch – Mitsubishi Research Lab

Diamond Touch, created by Mitsubishi Research Labs, is a multi-touch system that projects an image onto a table, resembling the multi-touch technology in the iPhone. In fact, its technology is so close to the iPhone’s that Samsung’s legal team brought in a Diamond Touch table to try to prove that Apple’s pinch-to-zoom patent was not valid. Take a look at this video and see for yourself.

The full history of multi-touch systems is published in a white paper by Bill Buxton, a pioneer in multi-touch interfaces.”

Putting a capacitive touch screen as opposed to a resistive touch screen on a device with a phone included is not a revolutionary idea. It was simply evolution that someone or a corporation were working to get this combination to market. Claiming that this was some sort of stroke of genius is laughable.

https://inventhelp.com/archives/11-12/inventhelp-newsletter-november-2012/who-invented-multitouch

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t35HXAjNW6s

As a ATT iPhone user I had a strong signal from Seattle to LA, then all the way to Phoenix.

That was not available when the iPhone came out. I lived on the I5 corridor and I can assure you that 3G was NOT available from Sacramento all the way to the Grapevine. . . until about 2009-2010. It was only being introduced in Stockton, the largest city on i5 south of Sacramento and north of the Grapevine in 2009 and I5 formed the western border of Stockton. It was certainly not available in 2006 and certainly not available North of Sacramento. As I stated it was only available inside a few large cities and even then very limited.

If anyone cares to verify Swordmaker’s claim that Apple invented multi-touch and “gestures”... I ask that you look over the following info and links:

Sorry, you are just wrong, despite your blizzard of obfuscating links relating to desktop computing with failed technology that never really worked or took hold. Apple holds the valid patents on all of the multi-touch technology on mobile devices. The last word uttered on these was made four years ago on October 17, 2013 when the US Patent Office validated ALL 20 claims Apple had made in their earlier patents. . . and Apple started licensing the technology to the other makers of capacitance multi-touch phones, recognizing that that genii had already left the bottle.

Apple multitouch patent upheld by US Patent and Trademark Office
by Bryan Bishop — The Verge — Oct 17, 2013, 4:35pm EDT
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a key Apple multitouch patent in a move that could have real ramifications for companies like Samsung and Motorola moving forward. The USPTO issued a certificate on September 4th confirming the patentability of all 20 claims of US patent number 7,479,949. An initial ruling back in December of last year had rejected them, but this latest reexamination certificate basically walks that back in its entirety.
The '949 patent covers multitouch functionality, such as the ability for a device to interpret a diagonal downward swipe as a purely vertical gesture in order to allow pages to scroll smoothly and consistently for users. It's a patent of particular note as it's been used by Cupertino against both Samsung and Motorola. In fact, it's one of the patents at issue in the ITC's recent ruling to ban the import of some Samsung products into the United States. As a result of that ruling, Samsung will have to ensure that the devices it sells in the US do not infringe upon any of the involved patents — and with this latest USPTO action, one avenue through which to resolve that issue has been shut down for good.

Here is Apple's US Patent # 7,966,578 specifying a Capacitance multitouch Screen on the iPhone.

Application 60937993 first filed Jun 29, 2007. So much for your bogus claims.

The courts and the US Patent Office and the Federal Trade Commission have validated these patents. You can dance around making a fool of yourself all you want, claiming anything you want, but the history and legalities are that Apple is credited with inventing the modern smartphone as it is embodied and works today as a multi-touch display device, not a physical keyboard device with a small display only phone. . . just as Apple essentially perfected the Graphical user interface for the desktop and had it ripped off by Microsoft to make an upside down and backwards system called Windows. . . and no, Apple did not "steal" it from Xerox, to anticipate your next claim. It was parallel development with Apple paying Xerox for some ideas only.

Once again Swordmaker, you are making it up as you go along. 3G was available in every major market long before the first I-phone was released. 3G was available in 2006 in the Tacoma-Seattle and Portland areas and down the I-5 corridor between them. I know because that is where I used it. I also was able to use 3G on a trip to Florida and the Midwest during that time period. My brother is an airline pilot; he used his Verizon 3G laptop dongle all over the country long before the first I-phone was released. Maybe you could explain to him how we wasn't actually able to use the service he subscribed to. You are just making stuff up while trying to sound authoritative and it is all BS.

No, fireman, I am NOT "making it all up." Here is a map comparing the 3G roll-out at the end of 2006 between Verizon and AT&T.

As I said, The coverage of 3G was essentially in a few large urban centers. AT&T certainly did not have full 3G coverage along the I5 corridor. . . 2G was the essential standard across the country. Verizon, the first carrier to start rolling out 3G had much better coverage since they started in 2002, but Apple's contract was exclusive with AT&T/Cingular for five years, so there was very little need for 3G until there was greater coverage.

AT&T did not get serious about 3G until 2008. I recall driving across the South Western US with my iPhone 3G, going through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and up through the Mojave desert and losing AT&T 3G only for about 5 minutes on that entire trip. . . with it tethered to my MacBook.

Just as a slide-out keyboard is much quicker to input data on than an onscreen keyboard... the different types of touch screens each have their own advantages. With a small display the precision of a resistive touch screen vs. the sloppiness of a capacitive display makes it much more useful for a variety of tasks.

Sloppiness of capacitance screens? Really? Talk about making it up as go. You do not know what you are talking about. Capacitance screens are far more accurate than resistance screen. As for speed of typing, multiple speed tests of people skilled in typing on their devices found that the touch screen typists were faster than anyone on a chiclet button keyboard.

You may be right. I just kept my eye on signal strength, not what type.

No, fireman, I am NOT “making it all up.” Here is a map comparing the 3G roll-out at the end of 2006 between Verizon and AT&T.

I don't have any real interest in the history of Verizon or AT&Ts 3G roll-out at the end of 2006 nearly a year before the first I-phone was released. My PPC-6700 was a Sprint phone and they started their 3G roll-out before both Cingular/AT&T or Verizon. By the time that I purchased my 3G PPC-6700 3G was working well in both the Seattle Tacoma area and in Portland. Sprint was also a leader in 4G deployment. By the time the first I-phone came out they were already working on upgrading many markets to WiMax 4G.

From 2006 http://www.zdnet.com/article/sprint-nextel-announce-4g-data-network/

My brother told me that he was getting good 3G service on his laptop dongle from Verizon at most of the airports he stayed over at across the country. This was in 2007 before the first I-phone came out.

What you got with the first I-phone was a phone that would not do 3G, and had a processor that was approximately the same speed as the PPC-6700 that came out nearly 2 years before and not nearly as many user accessible features. What you got for $600 and a two year contract was a screen that was about half an inch bigger and a gimmicky new form of touch screen that sorry... is not nearly as precise as a resistive touch screen. Oh and you are suppose to be able to type on the screen that you are trying to look at? Yeah sure... I bet that was a non-bias survey.

I guess Apple is who we can blame for the last ten years of texts and posts with bizarre auto spell check errors. I don't doubt that on-screen keyboards are almost as usable as tiny blackberry keyboards etc. but the slide out keyboard that came on the PPC-6700 was vastly superior to the touch screen of the first I-phone. To me it was worth the extra thickness.

The truth is I am not that fond of multi-touch... sorry. I generally turn multi-touch and “tapping” off on any laptop touch pad that I am using. Even on a phone or tablet it often gets in the way and causes unusual behavior. If this type of sensor is so much more accurate then why do the drawing pads that I use for making selections and drawing in photoshop and other graphics and 3d modeling programs still use a stylus? From your description you would think that using a bunch of our fat all at the same time would be more accurate.

sorry

From your description you would think that using a bunch of our fat fingers all at the same time would be more accurate.

Apple purchased a company who found commercial success with multi-touch and gesturing devices before they did.

“Westerman and his faculty advisor, John Elias, eventually formed a company called FingerWorks. The group began producing a line of multitouch gesture-based products, including a gesture-based keyboard called the TouchStream. This helped those who were suffering from disabilities like repetitive strain injuries and other medical conditions. The iGesture Pad was also released that year, which allowed one-hand gesturing and maneuvering to control the screen. FingerWorks was eventually acquired by Apple in 2005, and many attribute technologies like the multitouch Trackpad or the iPhone’s touchscreen to this acquisition.”

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/from-touch-displays-to-the-surface-a-brief-history-of-touchscreen-technology/2/

“The late 2000s often attribute Apple as responsible for the touchscreen, after shaking the mobile industry with the iPhone. The company did not invent the touchscreen, but innovated it. The technology became more useful and commercially available to a widespread audience.”

http://mashable.com/2012/11/09/touchscreen-history/#ZxK4OzTo9sqX

Another typo should be:
Oh and you are suppose to be able to type faster on the screen that you are trying to look at than a dedicated keyboard? Yeah sure... I bet that was a non-bias survey.

I generally turn multi-touch and “tapping” off on any laptop touch pad that I am using. Even on a phone or tablet it often gets in the way and causes unusual behavior.

You turn off multi-touch and tapping? That is not an option; it is built-in to the operating system and the device will not work without them. You obviously do not use what you are complaining about. . . You do make it up as you go along. . . a fact I have long suspected as you post your Idiocy in these replies. FACTS MEAN NOTHING TO YOU.

The multi-touch pads of Fingerworks TouchStream were not screens, fireman15, much to your surprise, as you thought they were. They were PADS to be used with desktop monitors. Do you see a screen on this TouchStream product? I certainly do not.

You go and Google things you just do not know anything about, certain I don't know what I am talking about and you'll stun me with your facturds. But you fail every time because I already know the history you don't know but think you are going to reveal with a flourish. You're just throwing anything you can think of against the wall, hoping it will stick, but I know one hell of a lot more about these facts than you do. . . and it won't work. Apple OWNS this technology and invented the way to combine this on a transparent overlaid capacitance on an LCD screen. That did NOT exist prior to Apple inventing it. . . and patenting it.

Your completely specious claim that resistance screens, which require a physical pressure to make a contact are more accurate than an electronic jump of an arc across an electrolytic barrier is ridiculous. If what you claim is true, where are all the oh-so-accurate resistance screens today? They are in the dustbin of technological history, replaced by the far better technology of capacitance grid screens which can now measure even the degree of pressure being applied.

Sprint was acting as a piggy-back carrier that rode on the back of Verizon's 3G network especially in the Western States. They leased much of their 3G bandwidth from Verizon by reciprocal roaming agreements.

Maps of 3G coverage circa 2008:

Oh, my your SPRINT 3G roll-out was far behind Verizon, I'd say less than one third of Verizon's coverage . . . which you claim was far ahead of Verizon way back before 2006. So much for your made-up claims. AT&T was admittedly behind everyone else but that was because they were expending their assets putting Ma Bell back together again. However, Sprint was able to leverage their agreements with Verizon all the way through 2016.

Oh and you are suppose to be able to type faster on the screen that you are trying to look at than a dedicated keyboard? Yeah sure... I bet that was a non-bias survey.

Are You Able To Churn Out 81 Words Per Minute On Your iPhone?
Have you been ridiculed by your BlackBerry-toting friends, saying that you can’t type fast enough on your iPhone’s touchscreen? Well, apparently it’s only due to lack of skill, as can be (barely) seen in the video after the jump. This iPhone user managed to churn out an amazing 81 words per minute (WPM) using the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard, which is faster than a lot of people can type using a full sized computer keyboard. If it makes you feel any better, he’s apparently beaten the record, and hit 83 WPM now. Does it motivate you to improve your iPhone texting skills?
Video Proof of 81 Words Per Minute Accurately Typing on iPhone Touch Screen

He's not the only one. Far faster than anyone on a chiclet keyboard phone. You don't even have a clue how the iPhone typing works.

You turn off multi-touch and tapping? That is not an option; it is built-in to the operating system and the device will not work without them. You obviously do not use what you are complaining about. . . You do make it up as you go along. . . a fact I have long suspected as you post your Idiocy in these replies. FACTS MEAN NOTHING TO YOU.

No... LOL!!! Changing the behavior of your input device is not a function the OS; it is a function of the input device's driver. I do have a laptop that I cannot turn off tapping or zooming because it has only a poorly written driver available... when I can I use a Bluetooth mouse with it. Fortunately on my primary laptops these “features” can be turned off. I don't expect you to have the ability to understand the way that this works or how it is done since you use only Apple products.

The multi-touch pads of Fingerworks TouchStream were not screens, fireman15, much to your surprise, as you thought they were. They were PADS to be used with desktop monitors.

Once again, LOL!!! Because you appear to only use Apple products you seem to have a very limited understanding of the way that separate components work together on your device. The multi-touch sensor on your I-phone is a separate component from the screen even if to you they seem like they are one component.

The first I-phone was a less capable device than many other cell phones that were already available when it came out. Most Apple devices are not the most powerful devices available when they come out. Apple is not and has never been a technological leader; Apple is a marketing leader.

Devices evolve over time. Cell phones that came with touch screens, cameras and could play music and videos already existed. Apple tweaked a few of the features and marketed the hell out of their new phone. The options available to users on Apple's creation were intentionally limited compared to other devices already available to make it easier for people to use. It wasn't more powerful or more capable than previous devices... it had a nicer screen and a newer style touch input device and was thinner. If those changes sound revolutionary to you as opposed to evolutionary... then you are displaying only your lack of understanding.

First you claimed that 3G wasn't available basically anywhere when the first I-phone came out... so it wasn't needed. Then you produced a coverage map that shows it was available basically everywhere in the country at that time through Verizon. “My claim” is that my device was able to pull in a good strong 3G signal where we live when I first purchased it. I also mentioned that my brother was a pilot who used a Verizon 3G Dongle and got a good strong signal all over the country. As far as who was leading who with their 3G roll-outs we can agree that AT&T was far behind, but Sprint did lead Verizon with the introduction of a 3G Capable Smart Phone. And yes unlike GMA providers the two CDMA carriers have partnered in many cases to improve both of their customers experiences.

The fact that Apple chose to partner with the least technologically advanced cell provider and thus chose to give their customers the worst possible access to a fast internet connection while on the road speaks volumes about the way they viewed the capabilities of their new device. It was intended to be a popular toy not a business tool.

The I-phone’s huge marketing success obviously influenced the direction of cell phone designers going forward. But have you ever looked at the automobiles? My wife and I restore vintage automobiles... you can guess the time period that most vintage automobiles came from by glancing at their exterior appearance. It is the same with houses and clothes and of course cell phones. We started out with a car phone, then went to a bag phone, then a large cell phone, then smaller and smaller cell phones, flip phones, and then on to smart phones. And then the smart phones started becoming more powerful with screens that started getting larger, while at the same time getting thinner. That is called evolution of design and Apple was part of that evolution.

Unless you live in a vacuum as part of some weird cult everyone’s choices are influenced by current trends. The disturbing development with Apple is the way that they have used questionable strong arm legal tactics in an unprecedented way to stifle their competition. To deny that this is what they have been up to is tantamount to living in an alternate reality.

Video Proof of 81 Words Per Minute Accurately Typing on iPhone Touch Screen

He's not the only one. Far faster than anyone on a chiclet keyboard phone. You don't even have a clue how the iPhone typing works.

You have gone off on a tangent insisting that the first I-phone could do everything better than its competitors... you may be an expert, but you have missed the whole gist of what made the first I-phone great and why with exceptional marketing it took off and made history.

One thing that I will give Apple a lot of credit for with the first I-phone is something that you do not seem to have a clue about. Microsoft threw the kitchen sink into Windows Mobile and envisioned phones as micro-sized PC. We users ended up having to do all sorts of things to “customize” our phones to get rid of features that we didn't use which were slowing down our performance.

Apple recognized that a phone was a device better suited to content consumption than content creation. Users didn't have to go to a lot of trouble to disable features they would never use that were just taking up space and using system resources. This not only improved performance, it cut down on user frustration. This is one of the reasons users liked the first I-phone. That is what Apple did... the first I-phone may have been a glorified feature phone, but people loved it.

According to you... we are almost all using copies of Apple's multi-touch input devices on our phones, tablets, and even laptops. Isn't that why Apple has sued everyone and their brother? If that is the case then most of us are very familiar with how “iphone typing” works. And a lot of us do use touch screen “typing” when we are out and about for posting here on Free Republic.

I do not know of anyone who is capable of typing on their touch screens at 81 words per minute. The video you provided is quite amazing. I do know lots of people such as myself who can type reasonably well on a laptop, who end up with all sorts of weird typos almost every time they enter posts from screens of their phones or tablets. And these posts were not entered at anywhere near 80 words per minute despite years of use. Text entered on multi-touch screen devices is kind of a joke. If you want to claim this travesty as one of Apple's revolutionary ideas... go for it. I was able to enter text much faster and more accurately on the keyboards built into my PPC-6700 and later on my HTC Touch Pro II, than I ever have been on my more recent phones and tablets. I will go ahead and give Apple their share of the credit for this step backwards.

Isn't that why Apple has sued everyone and their brother?

You continually mischaracterize what Apple did. Apple had ONE lawsuit. They sued Samsung, not "everyone and their brother." They did not sue any other Android makers. Other lawsuits that Apple has entered are the common course of FRAND lawsuits that come about in the course of licensing disputes where the patent holder breaks their FRAND contracts with the Standards organization and attempts what is called a "patent hold-up" against the licensee, demanding more than the FRAND rates they agreed to accept. . . but it is not Apple suing due to an Android maker infringing Apple's patents.

Previously, Apple did sue Microsoft for infringing their copyrights and patents for their Intellectual Properties. They wound up with a judge who did not understand such things as IP and won on only one claim. . . and were appealing his rulings. Then there was the lawsuit on Microsoft REALLY stealing Apple's quicktime code (there were telltale markers in the code such as Apple's engineer's social security number and his mother's maiden name imbedded in the code) to make their Windows Video Player software work. They were going to lose that case big time. . . and that resulted in the so-called 1997 "bail-out" of Apple but which was rather Microsoft Settling all prior lawsuit claims from Apple in a three-part agreement for Apple dropping all such claims.

For doing that Microsoft agreed to pay Apple $150 million in cash disguised as a purchase of preferred non-voting 5 year restricted stock, re-open the development, publishing, and distribution of Microsoft Office for Mac which they had stopped as a pressure ploy in the lawsuit for a minimum of five years, license from Apple the in-suit Intellectual Property for undisclosed future licensing fees, AND license TO Apple all of Microsoft's IP that Apple cared to use at NO COST. For Apple's part, Apple would drop all lawsuits, including the QuickTime suit and Windows appeals, license the software to Microsoft, agree to including MS Internet Explorer, along with Netscape Navigator, as an optional default browser in all new Macs and distributions of upgrade macOS, and issue the stock certificate. i.e. Microsoft lost and Apple won.

You have gone off on a tangent insisting that the first I-phone (sic) could do everything better than its competitors... you may be an expert, but you have missed the whole gist of what made the first I-phone (sic) great and why with exceptional marketing it took off and made history.

As for your claims that I am insisting that the original "I-phone (sic)," which you cannot even spell correctly, showing how little you know about that device after ten years of its being on the market, was the be-all-and-end-all, I did say that it was the 3G that resulted in the iPhone really taking off. Note the correct spelling, fireman.

You yourself are pointing out that the users of the Windows phone OS had to constantly tweak those devices and continually work on it to make it work. I recall vividly the complaints coming from that quarter about users having freezes and needing to reboot phones more than daily to keep them working. That was something that was never needed on an iPhone.

I do have a clue about what you claim I don't. But it wasn't and isn't germane to this discussion. No one was going to use a small screen to work on a spread sheet of any size, and Microsoft missed that, even going so far to make a CE variant of Excel. . . which with the low resolution of their phones could not be seen as a spread sheet but literally only as a window on a spread sheet, obviating the benefit of a spread sheet.

Steve jobs famously said "Perfection is found in removing those things that are not absolutely essential." That was the essence of the design of the iPhone. . . to make it intuitive to use.

If you think that productivity typing is supposed to be done on any mobile device the size of a phone, you are thinking entirely wrong. You yourself just said Apple realized these devices should be content consumption devices, but now you complain about not being able to type at 80 words per minute, yet I showed you it is entirely possible, with training, to do so. You just don't want to learn how. You also refuse to accept that Apple made a sea-change in the approach to the way data was input on mobile devices to a better modality, one that allowed a larger, better, clearer screen than what was available on devices with chiclet keyboards. If such physical keyboards were so much better, they would not have gone by the wayside as they have. The court of public opinion would have kept them alive. It did not. Ergo, they are not as useful as you claim except for a very small minority of die-hard fans that cannot maintain a profitable market for them.

You've used Android touch screens and claim that experience applies to iPhones. I find it doesn't. Apple's predictive typing is better. . . and if you like, you can turn it off. One other difference is that Apple's typing does not register a key until you remove your finger, not when you touch it, resulting in far fewer errors of typing. Since you can see what character is being touched before you remove your finger, it is easier to know whether you have the correct key.

Now, Fireman15, you are living in the past. I really don't care about the phone you were using in 2006. I know what the pundits were saying in 2007, and to a man, none of them found that any phone prior to the iPhone came close. You can use your defective memory to claim that a phone with only 128MB of memory with single touch resistive screen, is somehow the same as a phone with 4 GB or 8 GB of directly addressable memory and had a far larger color gamut to display on its larger, higher resolution screen, you go right ahead.

That Windows phone and its operating system is in the dustbin of history, along with the Blackberry, Nokia, and others, because they could not compete with the design that Apple introduced on January 9, 2007 as much as you dance and caper around trying to say yours had better capabilities. It was was bested by what you claim was mere hype from Apple. . . that no one could meet until almost three years later when the first Android phones hit the market copying Apple's designs.

You can use your defective memory to claim that a phone with only 128MB of memory with single touch resistive screen.

Somehow you keep forgetting to mention the processor in the PPC-6700 that despite being two years earlier ran actually a little faster than the original (excuse me) iPhone. You also conveniently forget to mention that the 128MBs of onboard storage on the PPC-6700 was expandable via a mini-SD card slot. You forget to mention that there was an additional 64MBs of SDRAM and 128MBs of user accessible and easily modifiable ROM. The screen was approximately 1/2 inch smaller than the massive 3.5” screen on the iPhone. But you seem to forget that a large portion of the iPhone’s screen was used by the onscreen keypad when actually using it to input data.

The biggest thing that you forget to mention is that Windows phones were able to run a massive selection of Programs of all varieties when the iPhone first was introduced. What you could do with the first iPhone was extremely limited by comparison. This is especially true when comparing 3G connectivity which the iPhone did not even have. All of this was intentional by Apple because they correctly predicted that they could sell an expensive toy with a slick ad campaign.

I can vividly remember comparing what I was using with a first generation iPhone. If it had been a very capable device I would have bought one. I have purchased a lot of devices over the years... even a few from Apple. As I said previously however it was not capable of doing what I used my phone for despite having a slightly bigger screen and a gimmicky new touch input that was slightly better for showing off pictures taken with its mediocre camera. But it was no revolutionary development. You are the one with the flawed memory, but you do have a very good imagination when it comes up to making up condescending remarks about devices you never used and know absolutely nothing about.

Somehow you keep forgetting to mention the processor in the PPC-6700 that despite being two years earlier ran actually a little faster than the original (excuse me) iPhone.

Sorry, I'm forgetting nothing. You just don't know what you're talking about. Comparing processors based on clock speed gets you nothing worthwhile or dispositive. It's meaningless unless you are comparing Apples to Apples, i.e. running the same processor and OS.

However, you are technically wrong. The PPC-6700 Apache was equipped with an Intel 416Mhz processor. The original iPhone came with an ARM processor from Samsung which clocked to 640MHz, but Apple under clocked it to 412MHz for power and video reproduction reasons. The difference is less than 1% but you have to realize the architecture differences to understand the memory access on the iPhone was far faster so apps ran much faster, especially anything that required data retrieval. . . or moving pixels around a screen. . . which the iPhone excelled at because it came not only with a data processor, it also came with a PowerVR MBX Lite 3D GPU to handle those graphics, something your PPC-6700 did not bother to worry about, handling the graphics with the Intel data processor!

You forget to mention that there was an additional 64MBs of SDRAM and 128MBs of user accessible and easily modifiable ROM. The screen was approximately 1/2 inch smaller than the massive 3.5” screen on the iPhone. But you seem to forget that a large portion of the iPhone’s screen was used by the onscreen keypad when actually using it to input data.

So what if there was a measly additional SLOW storage RAM? It wasn't usable for applications except for storage. . . because it was SLOW and had to be paged in and out. It was treated as a drive. So WHAT if the user had to play around with ROMs. Users, for the most part, really don't want to fiddle around with their phones, they want to USE them.

But you seem to forget that a large portion of the iPhone’s screen was used by the onscreen keypad when actually using it to input data.

Your PPC-6700 had an off-the-shelf 3" screen with resolution of 240 X 320 pathetic for displaying photos or videos. . . and very few colors. The iPhone had 320 X 480, twice the resolution and 262 thousand colors.

The iPhone's keyboard only took up half the screen and was quite usable, and it did not REQUIRE the use of a losable stylus as the PPC-6700 did, without which the screen would be useless, which could only input ONE character sequentially. . . and then require the stylus to navigate to the next key before the next character could be slowly input if the on-screen keyboard was invoked. . . and reviews of the PPC-6700 complain that it frequently popped up unwanted even when users were typing on the chiclet keyboard and then had to be dismissed before continuing their typing.

You call the camera in the iPhone "mediocre", but it had a far better camera with 2 megapixels and glass lenses than the plastic lensed 1 Megapixel camera in your vaunted PPC-6700, which lacked the memory to take very many photos at all.

You complain about the price of the iPhone, yet you ignore the fact that your 6700 with its limited features originally retailed for a whopping $629—$30 more than the original $599 the 8GB iPhone sold for and certainly more than the $499 the 4GB iPhone sold for. So much for your specious iPhone pricing arguments. Don't bother to bring them up again. (The PPC-6700 was later discounted to $399 as was the 8GB iPhone.)

But it was no revolutionary development.

If the iPhone was not revolutionary, fireman15, just WHERE are the phone makers that preceded it that are still on the market today? Where are the Nokia, Microsoft, RIM Blackberry, Motorola, Ericsson, and dozens of other competing phones? If they were so entrenched and so successful, where are they now? Why are the phones that are competitive to the iPhone now essentially copies of the iPhone design?

You can't answer any of those questions truthfully because you would have to admit your argument is lost.

Hold on. Samsung didn’t copy everything. They had a live incendiary grenade feature that Apple never had.