Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Except Symbian had a touch screen UI in the form of Nokia 7710 a few years before the iPhone, but Nokia killed it shortly after releasing it.


Nokia wasn't the first. There were Symbian touchscreen phones with a full-size display as early as 2000:

http://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_r380-195.php

The Sony Ericsson P800 is probably the best-remembered in this category. (I think I read somewhere that Steve Jobs once mentioned the P800 as an inspiration for the iPhone -- basically he told his staff: "Let's do this kind of device, but better.")

Anyway, the Symbian touchscreen devices were more like Pocket PCs than iPhones. They didn't really manage to break out of the desktop UI mold.

Apple was the first with capacitive multitouch. They also invented the modern mobile web browsing experience, where the window size is separated from the viewport and you can zoom/pan around with realtime feedback. This seems obvious now, but think back to what it was like to use the mobile web in 2006...


Yep, I forgot about Sony devices.

I used the mobile web since the early GPRS days. Remember WML?

Although they lacked capacitive multitouch, Symbian devices before 2006 already had zoom capabilities.

My N70 could already zoom in for content, if I remember correctly.


Sure but I don't think having a touchscreen compares with the iPhone experience, at all.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: