Re:Apple is a traditional business
by abritinthebay on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @07:53PM
(#16982182)
Nothing in the LG Prada was innovative - it's design was that of PDAs from a decade before. It's touchscreen did nothing that previous models hadn't.
Was it a nice industrial design? Yes. Wasn't very original though (and neither was the iPhone's).
You're also shifting the goalposts - you said smartphone, not "had a touchscreen". It was the first capacitive touchscreen but not even close to the first touchscreen btw. The IBM Simon in 1992 likely takes that win.
What the iPhone did that was innovative was in how it improved upon and combined the technology. It also pushed forward a lot of things in those technologies by several large leaps.
Long story short - the LG Prada is superficially visually similar to an iPhone and, likewise, bringing it up shows a very superficial understanding of the history of the mobile phone space.
Touchscreen was simple hardware it does not make a smartphone any more than a Camera or Internet connection does. There where 3 major gaps, gestures, native apps w/App Store, and a web browser capable enough to run 'Web 2.0' apps. And while not a direct phone feature an internet plan with useful bandwidth caps for regular browsing which also a major jump in how you used them.
Android, Windows phone, and iPhone all added these core features.
HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and were like night and day compared to either the Prada or iPhone. You are comparing apples to oranges.