The much maligned N-Gage had a true multitasking OS with internet and apps in 2003, except Americans never got along with Nokia or Symbian OS.
Only with the 3G could they start claiming it was a smartphone.
Sadly didn't stop boneheads like a NYT writer to try to relabel it as a "superphone" because smartphone was apparently by then too pedestrian for something Apple made...
The very defining feature of a smart phone are the apps, though.
EDIT: Due to downvotes, here’s Apple’s own page advertising how iOS 2 (introduced with the iPhone 3G) adds apps to the iPhone: https://web.archive.org/web/20080912112138/http://www.apple....
Back then pretty much every high end phone had that... The IPhone wasn't anything special at that time. The IPhone really took off then they allowed 3rd party apps.
LG had more than a dozen phones with touch screen (resistive) at that time that had "apps" but no third party apps (except for JavaME apps).
The game changer (as the linked site from Apple states as well) was an App Store allowing direct access to third party apps. And that's what created another modern tech revolution.
No. The point of a smartphone is to expand the scope of what can reasonably be done so they it can be considered more like a computer than a dedicated device with a narrow, defined set of capabilities. Jobs was right that the quality of the iPhone's browser was sufficient to raise it to that level.
Of course having 3rd party apps raises it to another level. It would have been a death sentence if the iPhone proceeded for too long without them while competitors developed a robust app ecosystem but that was never the plan.
http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2015/6/28/some-...
10 years ago? As far as cell phones go? Most definitely the "Dark Ages"... Considering we are moving into a time frame when watches are starting to have cell connectivity:
https://www.lifewire.com/smartwatches-with-cellular-connecti...
Where are we going to be 5 years from now? 10? 20? Compare the Treo and BlackBerry to the current iPhone X, Note 8, etc...
And i see screens with more colors and pixels, but other than that not much new. It is still calendars and messages that rules.
But from EDGE to LTE, from weak single core processors to 64-bit 4/6/8 core beasts, from no GPU to what would be considered desktop grade back in the day, from shitty 3gp 144p videos to hardware accelerated 4K H.264/5/VP8/9…
Yeah, people still do messages, but messages now include high quality multimedia edited on device.
Also, web surfing rules. Opera Mini on J2ME and others sucked, it was nothing like the modern mobile web.
As for editing videos or such on a mobile device, bah humbug. The interface is not there in any more than the most rudimentary way. If anything it has regressed unless one happen to have a Galaxy Note, as fingers simply do not offer the precision.
What about doing all of the above at the same time?
"I only see" is because you are limiting what you see in a way that goes against what the vast majority of people see.
That's like saying the new MacBook is no different than a 286 because you had Excel Worksheets on both.
Or saying there is no difference between a Model-T and a 2018 Honda Civic - they both use gas, have 4 wheels and a windshield.
Lots of high-end feature-phones had all these features in 2007–2008. (GPS was not common before then, but some had it earlier.)
> Facetime in realtime to anyone in the world?
Video calling was a heavily promoted feature of the first 3G phones, a long time ago.
> What about doing all of the above at the same time?
Good feature-phones had multitasking in 2006. I would often listen to music while running multiple third-party apps (!) at the same time.
Of course, these phones cost a tiny fraction of the price of the first iPhone, so hardware limitations like having only a few megabytes of RAM were a bit constraining. The functionality was basically there though.
Even comparing the original iPhone vs the current batches of iPhone - we are talking GENERATIONS of improvements. Massively better camera's, GPU, CPU, Batter, Screens - both pixel counts and size, network infrastructure, software infrastructure (MySpace vs Facebook).
Orders of magnitude improvements across ALL of those metrics.
Simply talking multi-tasking on the original Android and iPhones vs today? Comparing those vs the Palm and Blackberries they replaced?
I've lived through 20 years of Cell Phone... 10 years ago may not have been the "Dark Ages"... but it was the time immediately afterwords (Palm/BB/WinPhone were definitely the Dark Ages).
We are comparing Horses & Buggies, Model Ts and 2018 Honda Civics... the Model T was better than horses and buggies... but not that much better.