The chicken or the egg???

The prototype for the iPhone looks very similar to the LG KE850:

http://ces.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separated-at-birth/

It begs the question... which one is the chicken and which is the egg and which one really came first?
This is going to be an interesting story to follow.

well, really, the idea was bound to happen, mixing cell phone/pda/blackberry dna with a 'real' OS with a full touchscreen. seems like an obvious evolution that various design teams could have come up with completely (or mostly) in isolation from each other.

you can't fault oldsmobile for coming up with something you ride on with an internal combustion engine and three or four large wheels that would take the place of a horse and carriage around the same time mercedes did about 110-120 or so years ago.

It seems a little fishy..

No I don't think it's fishy, but LG seems to be one of the first in the market with the "new phone conept"...

remains to be seen who actually reinvented the phone

I don't see any lawsuit coming from this - The reinvention is in the way it works, not how it looks.

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/sony-ericsson-p910i.htm

By the time the iPhone is actually released ~June 2007, I'm sure that there will be many similar devices coming to market. Just because Jobs announced it first, doesn't necessarily mean that Apple made it first.

plus, LG phones generally have terrible call quality and i personally dislike their UI. So, apple wins. (well, i guess i cant quite say that yet )

eric said:

well, really, the idea was bound to happen, mixing cell phone/pda/blackberry dna with a 'real' OS with a full touchscreen. seems like an obvious evolution that various design teams could have come up with completely (or mostly) in isolation from each other.

you can't fault oldsmobile for coming up with something you ride on with an internal combustion engine and three or four large wheels that would take the place of a horse and carriage around the same time mercedes did about 110-120 or so years ago.

Click to expand...

There are many touchscreen smartphones on the market, and the large icon/large number interface has been around for a while in devices based on symbian, palm, and MS OSes. And I think it obvious that Apple looked at current UI elements and copied them for their new device. I don't find it any big deal, but it seems Apple fans will lambast anyone that makes something even remotely Applelike, yet go out of their way to excuse Apple for the same behavior.

dan828 said:

There are many touchscreen smartphones on the market, and the large icon/large number interface has been around for a while in devices based on symbian, palm, and MS OSes.

Click to expand...

http://www.latimes.com/technology/l...0,6424968.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines

In Japan, barely a ripple
Apple's much-anticipated iPhone is 'business as usual' in a country where mobile features already are so advanced.
By Bruce Wallace, Times Staff Writer
January 11, 2007

TOKYO — Tomoaki Kurita presides over racks of cellphones lined up outside his shop on a busy sidewalk in Harajuku, Tokyo's catwalk of youth street culture where people attracted by the riot of phone options can stop to flip open and fondle the latest models of what the Japanese call keitai.

From behind his busy counter, Kurita giggles when asked about the excitement in America over the arrival of Apple's iPhone, which can also be used to download music and surf the Internet.

"Sounds like business as usual," he says.