[MarsupilamiX]

By today's standards, absolutely, but back in 2007 it was the best available. I was using PalmOS and WM back then and bought 4 of the 1st Gen iPhones (4gb, 8gb & 2x16gb) as they were released. It was leaps & bounds beyond any other phone on the market from day 1. Which explains why everyone else scrambled to copy it.

Personally I'd say that every smartphone available back then was a better choice than the OG iPhone.

I have had Nokia S60/S80 phones and at least 2 WM phones, while the first 2 iPhones hit the market.
Just the lack of copy and paste made it pretty much useless for me.
Not even talking about the other limitations.

The sale numbers of the first iPhone weren't spectacular, and its biggest feature was pinch to zoom...
At least in the countries I travelled to back then, and the people I knew, nobody took the iPhone seriously.
It was a status symbol, for someone who already has seen it all.

This changed radically with the 3GS and the iPhone 4, but the first iPhone was nothing more than a proof of concept, that a touchscreen phone doesn't need a stylus.
It was, by every standard I use and used to evaluate phones, one of the worst phones I ever utilised.

My choice back then, was to buy an iPod Touch, and to employ a useful phone for everything that came remotely close to personal communications.

The current iPhone isn't awful. Stop it... it's the most successful mobile platform for a reason. Let's keep it civil.
Posted via CB10

Under what metric, is it the most successful mobile platform?
Haven't heard that claim in a long time...

Posted via CB10

[paper_monkey]

Sounds like the phone was not for you. I had one and at the time it was quite a game changer. Only big downside was the lack of copy paste.

To be very clear, I'm not picking a fight.. but how many iterations of iOS was it before they added cut and paste?

I can admit that I am a bit of a hypocrit and have an unfair blind spot towards Apple products. I grew up using an apple II+ clone and we were fortunate enough to have both a green monochrome and an orangey monochrome monitors for it (not to mention the rare special occasion when the whole contraption was lugged donwstairs and connected to the colour TV.. t was a magical time. Then from that we went to a laundry list of Macs.. I had a video iPod and now have a nano somewhere. They were all ok but never really seemed as easy to use to me as PCs did (likely a product of all my friends and my school using PCs so I realy didn't have anyone I could call for tech support). If i'm honest with myself, I've never really given an iPhone a fair test run but the few times I have used them I do know that they are not for me. I fear i've gotten rather off topic but regardless of my feelings towards Apple and the manner in which they provide their uniform solutions/ecosystem, there is no way they would still have the volume of users they have if their products were really that bad.

[Wiki Cydia]

Personally I'd say that every smartphone available back then was a better choice for me than the OG iPhone

Fixed that for you.

The sale numbers of the first iPhone weren't spectacular, and its biggest feature was pinch to zoom...

On balance, it was selling for $499/$599 here in the U.S., and then $399. Also, it's biggest feature was not "pinch to zoom": it was its use of a capacitive touchscreen. While the iPhone was not the first mass-market touchscreen phone, it was the first mass-market touchscreen phone to ship with a capacitive touchscreen, which made all of the other "multi-touch" features possible, including "pinch to zoom."

Under what metric, is it the most successful mobile platform?
Haven't heard that claim in a long time...

Android leads in marketshare, including total devices sold running some variant of Android (whereby "variant" I mean things like Kindle Fires). There are also more different types of Android devices than iOS devices (by design of course), and there may be more total Android apps now than iOS apps. But in everything else, including handset profits, browser share, app revenue, tablet-specific apps, etc., iOS is ahead of Android, in some cases substantially, despite trailing in market share.

[Mr.mister]

When people tell me they are thinking about buying an iPhone 1, I tell them that's a bad idea and they should get an iPhone 4 or 5 instead. People seem to value my expert opinion in that way.

People still want to buy iphone 1?

Better android than android. The future is black....

[treaker]

Just like the original iPhone, these new blackberry's are having the same growing pains.

BlackBerry 10 will only get better.

Z10 on Telus

[playbookster]

Wow, really? A first generation device was awful. Couldn't had been too bad for the time.

It's the z10 awful? It's a first gen device

Sent from my Z30

[heymaggie]

Resolved: Blackberry/BB10 now has the original iPhone beat hands down.

I would never recommend anyone use an original iPhone over a Blackberry. If you invented a time machine that did nothing but transport Q10's and Z30s back to 2007, Apple would be shamed out of the smartphone business, Android would have been squashed out of existence, and people would be crowding into Blackberry stores all over the world.


New BB10 ad campaign � "Hey the iPhone wasn't that good at first either"

[paper_monkey]

Resolved: Blackberry/BB10 now has the original iPhone beat hands down.

I would never recommend anyone use an original iPhone over a Blackberry. If you invented a time machine that did nothing but transport Q10's and Z30s back to 2007, Apple would be shamed out of the smartphone business, Android would have been squashed out of existence, and people would be crowding into Blackberry stores all over the world.


New BB10 ad campaign – "Hey the iPhone wasn't that good at first either"

I think you might be on to something there... ;P

[app_Developer]

New BB10 ad campaign � "Hey the iPhone wasn't that good at first either"

I have Mr. Chen on the line for you. He says he clearly picked the wrong person to head marketing.


Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk

[togarika]

Much of what was mentioned in the article more or less just reflected the limits of technology at the time.

But the article also stresses how long it takes to perfect a new smartphone platform, an angle one rarely sees mentioned in the mainstream press, in their eagerness to be active cogs in the promotion of "The Latest Thing" as essentially partners of companies pushing products.

Look How Unbelievably Awful The First iPhone Was

Thank you very much! I was wondering when someone was going to pull up an article like this because the amount of complaining about the BB10 even Playbook OS being incomplete is just too much. I think most people do not know they amount of time and effort required to code for something as complex as an OS.

[paper_monkey]

It's the z10 awful? It's a first gen device

Sent from my Z30

Between the less than competative specs and the blackberrying of the BB10 OS launch, I think calling the Z10 (in comparison to the initial release of the iPhone) awful is not entirely unreasonable. For as late launching as the OS was and as far into the 'next gen' smart phone game as all the other platforms/manufacturers are, there's no excuse for BlackBerry to have released BB10 as half baked as it was. The hardware they had more or less locked themselves into because the OS took so long to get finished and out.

You can't compare the Z10 to the original iPhone. The original iPhone changed the smartphone paradigm for the average user in North America. The Z10 should have been developed with the advantage of knowing, in excrutiating detail, all of the pitfalls and fumbles that Apple made with their first several iterations of the hardwear and software (to say nothing of Android, WP, Symbian, etc.). I really enjoy the UI for BB10 and I quite enjoy my Z30. I also like my PlayBook but in my opinion, they should never have spent the time and money on the playbook, those resources should have been devoted entirely to launching BB10 and their handsets (another issue that Apple didn't have to contend with... one handset means one OS implementation and no problem for Devs codeing apps)(but I digress). They needed to get the OS to market far more polished than it was at launch and a good 2 years earlier than they did to even have a hope of a strong push to try and get market share back. They were more interested in an iPad killer and a hockey team in Hamilton than they were in getting back the market sector that they created in North America.

[axeman1000]

I have Mr. Chen on the line for you. He says he clearly picked the wrong person to head marketing.


Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk

Jeez by that logic with all the hateful opinions from the collective four and five on here, and they are running around in this post too if you haven't caught it, they would have been employed with all their "knowledge" of how the company is going to go, and how bb10 supposedly sucks, they would have already been employed by now lol.

BlackBerry forever, haters never!

[paper_monkey]

Jeez by that logic with all the hateful opinions from the collective four and five on here, and they are running around in this post too if you haven't caught it, they would have been employed with all their "knowledge" of how the company is going to go, and how bb10 supposedly sucks, they would have already been employed by now lol.

BlackBerry forever, haters never!

Can you not agree that it is possible to support a platform and still acknowledge when said platform has made a mess of the launch that was to have saved them? Can you honestly say that BlackBerry did a great job on the launch of BB10 and the marketing of the OS and devices? I love my Z30 and BB10 but I cannot in good conscience laud BlackBerry for their launch of BB10. They took way too long to get it to market and by the time they did, any chance they had of having handsets with competative spec went out the window and then the only marketing that took place, really, was the stories about how long it took, how low the market share was and the issues that people were having with their new devices. That wuickly morphed into there not being the go to apps that people want on their phones and it became a non starter.

Hopefully their refocusing on the enterprise market will let them get BB10 up to where it should be and then once the platform is stabalized they can work on competatively speced and priced handsets. For as late as they are to the party, BBRY should have done far better and made a far bigger bang on re-entry..

[adjdudley21]

Really?



The BB10 OS that was released on the Z10 at launch was terrible. There, I've said it... but I have my flame-proof trousers on, so I'm not scared.

The CB forums at the time were manic over the huge list of bugs and omissions in 10.0. One I particularly recall was that BB had screwed-up email and there were problems with the "replying" functionality. A BB device that couldn't do email properly!

The BB10 OS has definitely improved since then, although I'll briefly mention that many of those improvements aren't available unless you are prepared to load one of the unsupported leaks. However, I can't recall any other OS that was released with so many functional aspects simply missing when compared with a previous generation. That's what I mean when I say BB10 is unfinished, and IMO is why the mass migration of legacy BB users (to a device that did less than their existing handsets) didn't happen.



On that we agree... except maybe for the bit about BB once again ruling the world.

Besides the app selection, my z10 running the original OS was fine.. It worked, didn't have restart issues, everything set up nice and easy and I loved it.. sure, when you compare the 10.2 OS with the original, it doesn't even compare, but this has been upgrades less than a year old� And furthermore, 10.2 would quite possibly be available if, blackberry bucked the carriers, but for whatever reason, they are scared to do that� not sure how apple can do it, but not the other phone makers, it seems a bit *** backwards but it is what it is.. I love my phone and as long as blackberry remains a company and puts out a product i love, then I will buy it.. and they will rule the world again so deal with it�. BOOOYAA!!!!!

[heymaggie]

Despite what people aren't willing to admit, this is the same script that Palm followed: Caught off guard by the iPhone; Acquisition of a computing platform (BeOS, QNX); Mad rush to get the OS running on a new device; Belated launch of a mostly-completed smartphone; App gap; Cold shoulder from carriers and retailers; Failed tablet launch. Even the Android side-loading or dual-booting was a significant part of the webOS story.

[JeepBB]

Besides the app selection, my z10 running the original OS was fine.. It worked, didn't have restart issues, everything set up nice and easy and I loved it.. sure, when you compare the 10.2 OS with the original, it doesn't even compare, but this has been upgrades less than a year old� And furthermore, 10.2 would quite possibly be available if, blackberry bucked the carriers, but for whatever reason, they are scared to do that� not sure how apple can do it, but not the other phone makers, it seems a bit *** backwards but it is what it is.. I love my phone and as long as blackberry remains a company and puts out a product i love, then I will buy it.. and they will rule the world again so deal with it�. BOOOYAA!!!!!

Yes, not everyone was affected by the random restarting, it's true. Luckily BB fixed the problem after a couple of months and it was hardly embarrassing at all for BB. Still doesn't excuse the bugs and wholesale omission of features at launch that were standard on every existing BB device.

I'm happy to accept your point that OS10.2 is an advance on the incomplete and buggy mess that was 10.0 - that was rather the point I was making and I'm guessing BB agree they were omissions because many of these features I believe are reinstated in the later releases?

I always chuckle at the "less than a year old" excuse (for it surely is one) with the implication that BB is moving the OS development along at lightning speed. For one, 10.2 is unavailable to most unless they want to load a leak; and two, iOS7 launched in September and has already pushed out four! updates IIRC. Now THAT is development!

All that said, I'm glad that you love your phone, and I look forward to the day BB once again rules the world so you can say "I told you so".

[diegonei]

Let's face it. The original iPhone didn't do much.

It was the idea of the phone that rocked the world. Full touchscree star trekkish type on glass device with a powerful browser that could give you full web pages instead of WAP versions (oh lord, WAP ). Otherwise, every other phone out there had more features. It's a fact.

That does not change the other fact - the iPhone managed, for all its flaws, to catcch the public's eye and provide a avenue to the information they wanted in a mobile way better than other phones then. Even if you could't copy paste that for the love of your kids.

Now, BB10, is on the very same place. It's only REAL disadvantage is that the BlackBerry brand is so darn tarnished nobody is even willing to give it a proper spin.

And they few that do, can't deny it is a great phone/OS/platform - yet on its infancy.

PS: I know I can't demand, but wouldn't it be nice if we could stick to the facts, keep a cheerful disposition and discuss thigs that are just things, instead of turning them into mortal battles? You see, I never had an iPhone and I do not have a biased view on it (meaning: I may not bow to it, but I sure won't bash it). It would rock if we all could keep a level head.

[jegs2]

Sounds like the phone was not for you. I had one and at the time it was quite a game changer. Only big downside was the lack of copy paste.

It basically went head-to-head with the Palm Treo ... and won.

[sinsin07]

Fixed that for you.

On balance, it was selling for $499/$599 here in the U.S., and then $399. Also, it's biggest feature was not "pinch to zoom": it was its use of a capacitive touchscreen. While the iPhone was not the first mass-market touchscreen phone, it was the first mass-market touchscreen phone to ship with a capacitive touchscreen, which made all of the other "multi-touch" features possible, including "pinch to zoom."

Android leads in marketshare, including total devices sold running some variant of Android (whereby "variant" I mean things like Kindle Fires). There are also more different types of Android devices than iOS devices (by design of course), and there may be more total Android apps now than iOS apps. But in everything else, including handset profits, browser share, app revenue, tablet-specific apps, etc., iOS is ahead of Android, in some cases substantially, despite trailing in market share.

To further that point:
IBM DEC. 26, 2013: Alert: Mobile Traffic and Sales Surge on Christmas Day 2013
Relative point:
"iOS vs. Android: As a percentage of total online sales, iOS was more than five times higher than Android, driving 23 percent vs. 4.6 percent for Android. On average, iOS users spent $93.94 per order, nearly twice that of Android users, who spent $48.10 per order. iOS also led as a component of overall traffic with 32.6 percent vs. 14.8 percent for Android."

How does IBM know?
"Today's updates are based on the cloud-based IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, the industry’s only real-time, cloud-based digital analytics platform that tracks millions of transactions and analyzes terabytes of raw data from approximately 800 retail sites nationwide. Visit www.ibm.com/benchmark for real-time data alerts, or follow the hashtag #SmarterCommerce. "

What happened to the Android market share ? How can the above be true?

Speculation: Millions upon millions upon millions of cheap android handsets in the hands of underdeveloped nations.

[sinsin07]

It's the z10 awful? It's a first gen device

Problem is it's no longer 2007. People expect more. This is reflected in the adoption of BB10 devices.

[sinsin07]

Resolved: Blackberry/BB10 now has the original iPhone beat hands down.

I would never recommend anyone use an original iPhone over a Blackberry. If you invented a time machine that did nothing but transport Q10's and Z30s back to 2007, Apple would be shamed out of the smartphone business, Android would have been squashed out of existence, and people would be crowding into Blackberry stores all over the world.

New BB10 ad campaign – "Hey the iPhone wasn't that good at first either"

So whatcha saying" heymaggie? The answer for Blackberry is this:
Attachment 233892
Rumor has it the flux capacitor runs on QNX so it should be a no-brainer for Blackberry.

[sinsin07]

Between the less than competative specs and the blackberrying of the BB10 OS launch, I think calling the Z10 (in comparison to the initial release of the iPhone) awful is not entirely unreasonable. ...

LOL. Is "blackberrying" a new negative adjective?

[sinsin07]

Despite what people aren't willing to admit, this is the same script that Palm followed: Caught off guard by the iPhone; Acquisition of a computing platform (BeOS, QNX); Mad rush to get the OS running on a new device; Belated launch of a mostly-completed smartphone; App gap; Cold shoulder from carriers and retailers; Failed tablet launch. Even the Android side-loading or dual-booting was a significant part of the webOS story.

You forgot a few items:
Multiple CEOs
Gesture based OS
Hardware specs behind the times
Trying to use another platform to prop up the deficiencies of your own platform, i.e. the iTunes fiasco
(and as you mentioned, the side-loading)
Releasing a tablet before a hero smartphone

And much much more. LOL.

[JeepBB]

.

You see, I never had an iPhone and I do not have a biased view on it (meaning: I may not bow to it, but I sure won't bash it). It would rock if we all could keep a level head.

Ironically, for all that I've written above that might make me seem an uber-sheep I actually traded from an iPhone *to* a BB 9700... battery life on the iPhone was rubbish and I couldn't live with it.

Doesn't alter my view that BB10 at launch was terrible, and that iPhone's success story will not be repeated by BB10, though.

[axeman1000]

Can you not agree that it is possible to support a platform and still acknowledge when said platform has made a mess of the launch that was to have saved them? Can you honestly say that BlackBerry did a great job on the launch of BB10 and the marketing of the OS and devices? I love my Z30 and BB10 but I cannot in good conscience laud BlackBerry for their launch of BB10. They took way too long to get it to market and by the time they did, any chance they had of having handsets with competative spec went out the window and then the only marketing that took place, really, was the stories about how long it took, how low the market share was and the issues that people were having with their new devices. That wuickly morphed into there not being the go to apps that people want on their phones and it became a non starter.

Hopefully their refocusing on the enterprise market will let them get BB10 up to where it should be and then once the platform is stabalized they can work on competatively speced and priced handsets. For as late as they are to the party, BBRY should have done far better and made a far bigger bang on re-entry..

I agree, the marketing was pathetic, but the device and os was pretty good out of the box. And now here comes the reboots and blah blah blah, but that only resided mostly, and I said mostly, in the us, which makes you wonder if it was the fact that the companies (sprint, att, t mobile) modified something with their branding that caused the issue.

But the big thing missing is, Rome wasn't built in a day so neither will the os be the best out of the box. Anyone buying a tech device and thinks that is crazy.

BlackBerry forever, haters never!