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A comment on iPhone X. Parent comment

Re:iPhone X by mschaef on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @03:41PM (#15231384)
> Do you think phones are a "done" thing?

The basic pattern of mobile phone design was more or less settled in the 80's with the DynaTac, and the phones leading up to (but not including) the original iPhone were all refinements of that same original pattern. The same thing happened with smart phones: the original iPhone set the pattern and then there've been a number of refinements ever since.

I'm not saying the refinements aren't huge improvements (particularly when viewed collectively over a period of 10 years), but just that the basic pattern is relatively fixed most of the time.

> All these features are cool and somewhat exciting but nothing groundbreaking that will change computing/communications forever.

Personally, I'm not that excited about a world where there are are continual 'groundbreaking changes that will change computing/communications forever'. There's a lot to be said for consolidating the gains made in these periodic steps up in functionality, and taking the time to understand the new capabilities offered by each.

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Re:iPhone X by robotresearcher on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @04:57PM (#15232624)
> mobile phone design was more or less settled in the 80's with the DynaTac

The Star Trek communicator nailed the flip-phone design in 1966. The StarTac in 1996 was able to realize this: a quite different design from the DynaTac brick and its candy bar descendents.

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Re:iPhone X by mschaef on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @05:38PM (#15233068)
> The StarTac in 1996 was able to realize this: a quite different design from the DynaTac brick and its candy bar descendents.

Having used both, the StarTac was pretty clearly an evolution of the DynaTac, in particular as far as the functionality goes. (But I tend to discount the significance of the flip phone physical design as any kind of major step forward. Which is borne out by the fact that it's so uncommon these days.)

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Re:iPhone X by fenwick67 on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @04:40PM (#15232362)
The iPhone was not a total revolution in phones the way you describe. They did not invent the touchscreen phone nor the smartphone. They improved them.
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Re:iPhone X by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @04:45PM (#15232439)
There were many not a few touchscreen phones before the iPhone, no multi-touch ones, and many crappy resistive screen phones that needed a sharp pointy thing to be kind of responsive.

Smartphones were just a niche before 2007 made them mainstream. The iPhone did to smartphones what the iPod did to digital music players, turning niche into norm.

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Re:iPhone X by fenwick67 on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @06:44PM (#15233673)
Many phones at the time had web browsers, games, bluetooth support, played MP3s, et cetera. Look at the Motorola Razr as an example. They were smartphones.
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Re:iPhone X by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @08:35PM (#15234432)
Sure. Just very few people used them. Also, I know WAP looked great then, but today it looks kind of crappy.
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Re:iPhone X by mschaef on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @09:35PM (#15234766)
> I know WAP looked great then,

You sure about that? I don't really have fond memories of WAP...

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Re:iPhone X by mschaef on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @06:55PM (#15233748)
This is just proof that a litany of features doesn't make a product.
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Re:iPhone X by mschaef on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @05:42PM (#15233112)
> The iPhone was not a total revolution in phones the way you describe.

It was a revolution because it actually sold and was relevant to more than just a handful of high-end users. (I had phones with e-mail, web, and app capabilities prior to an iPhone, but those features were all just sideshows until the iPhone made them useful. The only use I can remember having for J2ME apps was to play Yahtzee on a Sanyo 4900.)

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