I had a Nokia N95 when the iPhone was released. The N95 was far more functional:

* Multitasking was allowed

* Good maps app for navigating

* Rhapsody subscription service for all your music needs

* 3G support

* Built-in SIP client

The iPhone had none of this, but it had the superior UI. It took years for Apple to catch up to the technology of the klunky N95.

The N95 sold well and was a solid great phone for the time.

However, the Nokia N95 suffered from a small screen 2.6 inches relative to the iPhone’s 3.5 inch display. It mostly sucked for web browsing, which seemed less import because all phones sucked for web browsing.

What separated the iPhone was a useful touch screen enabling large screens, an acceptable web browser even if it lacked flash etc, and an unlimited bandwidth option. If anything it was really bandwidth that changed how people used their phone.

The N95 and the iphone both sucked for web browsing. Websites just weren't made for small screens, you had to zoom in so far and links were hard to click. I wouldn't say the iPhone's browsing experience was any better than the rest, but perhaps that unlimited data plan (not bandwidth) changed things up.

In the iPhone's defense, vs the other smart phones I had used up until I got my iPhone 4, it was the first one to have a web browser that worked reasonably well on all non-mobile websites, and it was that factor alone at the time was enough to get me hooked.

I would argue that tap to zoom on desktop sites on the iPhone worked better than most “mobile optimized” sites.

along with reader mode, and a vertically integrated rendering engine

And don't forget iPhone lacked MMS on release and almost a year or two after if I remember correctly

Unexpectedly, MMS was so crappy at the time and full of spam that it was actually a feature for me. Total count of legit MMS I ever received was half a dozen, and again half of that that I sent.

(I did not own an iPhone 1, only a 3G one, but I skipped on MMS as hard as I could)

That's revisionist. People tend to forget that when the iphone was released it had no appstore and Apple was telling people to develop webapps. This was less functional than existing offerings on the market, but it sure looked and felt better.

People also tend to forget that it was incredibly refined already in v1. I remember hooking it up to my car and being super impressed that I could pick whether I wanted sound to go to the car, my phone, or my headphones. Each makes sense in a different context, but other products at the time assumed that as long as there was a BT connection available it should use that. They also clearly did some great usability work on touch targets. I could tap on links in web pages and it would do the right thing. Other phones, even if they had a decent browser (they didn’t), forced me to hunt for the magic touch target.

Blackberries were good at email, but otherwise they lost to Apple badly.

Refined yes, featureful no.

The fact that you could browse actual websites (sans Flash of course) was amazing.

WiFi and the companion iPod Touch made me feel it wasn't as much a phone as a goddmaned computer with a phone app that mostly didn't suck.

The text input took a while but I still charge up and unlock my OG iPhone and am amazed at how well it fares (yes, iOS3).

The original iPhone was revealed as three things: a phone, an iPod, and a revolutionary new browser. All three were true. I remember when I bought the first iPhone I was giddy how delightful Safari was, and it was the first smart phone to pass my “xkcd test” (could I figure out how to open a browser and type xkcd.com without getting forcibly corrected). It was also the best iPod and the first to introduce “visual voicemail”. It truly was revolutionary in visual and functional design.

No doubt, I was amazed when I first got my hands on one. The iphone got things right that had never been gotten before. But the fact remains that on the day it launched, there were other smartphones on the market that had more features. When the feature-sets overlapped, iphone was generally the clear winner, but if you tallied it all up, the iphone was clearly lacking a few obvious features that others had, such as the aforementioned third-party software, or even just the simple ability to copy-paste text (which didn't come to iphones until several iterations later as I recall.)

I'm curious when you say less functional than existing offerings you mean .... exactly what? Those java apps you could download from your cell phone carrier that ran incredibly slow? Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?.. Because Android wasn't out... I agree with foolfoolz, iphone raised the bar both functionally and visually, regardless of having a app store at launch.

> Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?

Huh? Windows CE and, later, Windows Mobile had quite a large number of apps for its era since the programming model was similar to desktop Windows (pre .NET) meaning that there was a ready-made base of developers for it. They weren't necessarily easy to find since the idea of an app store (and Apple/Google eating 30% of your revenue) didn't exist yet but they were there.

They had apps but the quality was low and prior to the Apple App Store’s standard terms discoverability was basically paying baksheesh to the the carriers – our clients were quoted a minimum of $50k per carrier just to be in the store, scaling up based on your perceived ability to pay.

There certainly where high quality applications for WinMo, and discovery was as simple as reading a forum or two. Sure, maybe not quite as easy as going to the app store and downloading some fake app that does absolutely nothing and steals your info, but it worked pretty well. And chances of the WinMo app being actually malicious were lower, too.,

Why do you say parenthetically pre .Net? I programmed ruggedized Windows Mobile devices around 2008 using both C++/MFC and .Net Compact Framework/Windows Forms and they were both just like programming on Windows.

The Palm/Treo app market was quite strong, I had several good and useful apps on my Treo 650 that integrated nicely with a desktop and made it a properly useful device. The app installation method was a bit primitive but there was absolutely a strong market for 3rd party apps.

hmmm - I have a blind spot for palm during that time, completely spaced them. I was a windows mobile power user 2003 thru version 5/6. I will take your word for it.

In an age before android or iphones, blackberry ruled the world. The iphone as it was released was a functional regression for blackberry power users. And it didn't catch on with that demographic until Apple iterated on the iphone to close the gap.

You are correct - I totally spaced the blackberry. I was focused on the app store comment. LOL them blackberry power users hung on for awhile huh?

Blackberry ruled the US. It was mostly unknown in the world.

Nitpicks aside, if Blackberry preceded the iphone only in America, it still preceded the iphone. Note that I never claimed that predecessors to the iphone, with more functionality than the iphone, were also more commercially successful in America, let alone worldwide. Claiming that would be ridiculous.

Americans have a blind spot when it comes to smartphones pre-iPhone, because Nokia wasn't such a big player on that side of the pond. The Symbian S60 ecosystem was fairly well-developed, certainly by the standards of the time.

Yeah I remember seeing a demo of a Psion from a SwissAir seatmate. It was quite awesome for year 2000.

Nah I was a big fan of s60 Had the birth control 3650 with multiplayer snake. That phone upped the game, but thought we were talking about design and functionality. I wouldn’t call the 3650 a jump in functionality besides it included one of the first cameras stateside .

“The iPhone Is a Breakthrough Handheld Computer”, Walt Mossberg’s original review. Maybe not 1000x, but definitely multiple X better (especially compared to leading US phones).

- First phone emphasizing Wi-Fi

- Full web browser

- Integrated iPod

http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha...

My old Nokia E90 would beg to differ. It was released before the first iPhone, WiFi works very nice, thank you, has a full web browser, and worked more than well enough as an MP3 player.

It also sported a screen comparable to a "retina" display.

A Blackberry was probably more functional at that time but wasn't as nice as to use and look at.

Whether you believe that to be true probably depends on whether you more frequently used email or the web. The Blackberry was great for messaging but the browser & other non-core apps were a bad joke.

The browser was great for sites that were optimized for it. ESPN at my fingertips...that was Amazing.

True. back then a mobile phone was mainly a messaging device.

Blackberry failed by not embracing apps. The app landscape was a mess of incompatibility, had poorly made apps, and no unified App Store. This where iOS killed Blackberry.

Umm, no, it was not. Even Windows Mobile was far more functional than iPhone. But iPhone looked cute, and had some ease of use affordances for people who could not be bothered actually learning anything (but then this had always been Apple's target audience).

I wrote field service apps for Windows Mobile devices around 2006-2008. Windows Mobioe could do more, but it wasn’t more functional.

What is your definition of functional then?

Obviously, Apple did something (likely marketing, imho, and of course extreme ease of use) right to make the iPhone as popular as it is, but I would need to be convinced that it had something to do with functionality.

Windows CE was not functional with an easy to lose stylus, the touch screens were horrible and it was mostly a miniature Windows desktop. The apps were not exactly touch friendly.

The version of IE was unusable for most of the web. But you don’t think “extreme ease of use” made the iPhone more functional?

The devices we use to deploy were $1000-$2000 (ruggedized devices) so they definitely weren’t cheap devices for the time.

My first WinMo device (and still the most convenient smartphone I've ever had, the SCH-i760) was perfectly well operable 95% of the time even without the stylus -- there was a joystick (and a dialpad) on the front. I rarely had to actually use a stylus.

IE eventually got pretty useless, but unlike iPhone you could always load alternative browsers, shells, and what not.

Sorry, I am still seeing that yes, iPhone is easier to use, as long as you don't need to do much, but functional? Not back then. And whether capacitive or resistive screen is better is a big question -- at least resistive is far more precise.