Steve Jobs on iPhone design
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Steve Jobs on iPhone design
From: Tony Fadell
Date: October 5, 2005 3:59:52 PM PDT
To: Steve Jobs, Jon Rubinstein, Greg Joswiak, Bob Borchers, Phil Schiller, Jeff Williams, Jonathan Ive, Eddy Cue, Jeff Robbin, Scott Forstall
Subject: Samsungʼs SGH-E910 Bang & Olufsen “fashionphone”
The first review...
Weird way to hold the cellphone
Has a clickwheel-like control
Smaller in Y than a Z but really thick - size forms 69.7x64.7x23.9 mm
QVGA (320x240 pixels, 43x32 mm, 2.1” ), shows up to 262K ( TFT )
Camera in the hinge
800 mAh Li-Ion - removable
From: Steve Jobs
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 17:41:16 -0700
To: Jony Ive, Bas Ording
Subject: Fwd: Samsung’s SGH-E910 Bang & Olufsen “fashionphone”
This may be our answer - we could put the number pad around our clickwheel. Of course we should orient it like a watch, with 3, 6, 9 and * in the pure horizontal and vertical positions, just like any clock (they really screwed this up in that respect. We could also orient the letters so they are easier to read from a normal position (letters on the bottom keys are the opposite of the way there are here, and maybe vertical on the sides).
Thoughts?
Steve
[This document is from Apple v. Samsung (2012).]
Further reading from Nilay Patel for The Verge (August 3, 2012):
We've seen a number of early iPhone prototypes come out as evidence in the Apple / Samsung trial, but today we got our first glimpse at the very beginning of the iPhone process in 2005, when Apple was considering grafting a phone onto the existing iPod line. We now know that's literally true — early discussions involved putting a ring of number keys around the iPod click wheel. "This may be our answer," said Steve Jobs in an email to Jony Ive.
As it happens, in 2005 Samsung and Bang & Olufsen had just released the SGH-E910 "fashion phone" with a similar arrangement, and iPod head Tony Fadell sent an Engadget blog post about the phone to Jobs and other Apple execs. … Samsung brought the email out in order to show that Apple is also inspired by Samsung designs, although it's fairly indirect evidence — none of this bore fruit, and Apple quickly dropped the "iPod plus phone" approach to focus on the touchscreen concept that eventually became the iPhone. But it's an interesting look at the early genesis of the iPhone project, and it definitely makes Jobs' joke "reveal" of the first iPhone in 2007 that much funnier.
Further watching: first iPhone introduction (January 9, 2007)
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-Internal Tech Emails