Samsung filed a patent for the phone's design in Dec 2006. Must have been working on it at least some time before that. iPhone was introduced on Jan 9, 2007.

I thought samsung manufactured large portions of the first iphone. I am sure apple spent more than a few months testing, designing, and working with manufacturing partners to build parts to spec, etc.

I make no assumption on whether they did or didn't, but couldn't samsung have cribbed some notes during that timeframe?

From the recent comments of Samsung design chief the Samsung subsidiary making parts for Apple is different and independent from the one that makes smartphones. Samsung smartphones division competes for parts same way Apple does -- they don't always use Samsung made parts in fact.

Other problem is that Samsung only makes some parts of the iphone -, there is no reason to think they had finished product design before the iphone was announced.

Ah. Great info thanks.

My argument is mostly about this bit "Samsung ... brought it to market before the iPhone".

Also, I saw Korean patent reference in the article I've linked to. There is no proof of that patent. Korea patent search [1] probably broken. Doesn't return any phone patents or design patents applied for in December 2006

[1]http://detseng.kipris.or.kr/ndetsen/loin1000a.do?method=logi...