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How the iPhone and iPad Changed Android and Tablet PCs

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Under the guidance of Steve Jobs, and other key Apple employees, the iPhone has made a huge mark on the smartphone and consumer electronic market. By daring to go against the grain, ditching a keyboard and going with a large touchscreen, Apple changed the face of smartphones.

This is quite evident in the fast evolution of Android smartphones when you compare those leaked out before the iPhone and those which came to market after the iPhone.

As you can see in the images below, the early Android prototypes looked like the love child of a Windows Mobile, Palm Treo and BlackBerry Threesome, but after Apple showed that consumers would purchase a touchscreen only device with minimal buttons, we began to see beautiful Android devices, and eventually competition that pushes the iPhone to be better.

Android before the iPhone and After the iPhone

Android before the iPhone and After the iPhone

Via Designer-Daily

Really, the competition is what drives our industry. If there was a clear titan with absolutely no competition it would be a boring industry. Thankfully, we have many players in the smartphone market, which means that now it is Android’s turn to teach the iPhone a few things. This continual back and forth is what keeps delivering better looking and better performing devices.

The same can be said for the tablet market, which has gone from a specialty niche market to a mainstream consumer purchase. Several sources have compared the design of Windows tablet PCs before the iPad to Windows and Android Tablets after the iPad. While you can’t argue that there is a change in many of the tablets devices sold today, the Windows tablets shown in this example are designed for specialty industries, rather than to be a general use consumer device.

It is worth noting that, the HP TC 1100 (a slate with a detachable keyboard) and several convertible tablet devices provided a more design centric and user friendly way to use a tablet PC — and put productivity on the iPad to shame.

Tablets before and after the iPad

Tablets before and after the iPad

Via OSX Daily

In an interesting turn, we are seeing a growth of iPad accessories to add rugged protection (like the OtterBox Defender), handles (like the Belkin Grip 360), iPad styluses and matte screens to the iPad.

With Windows 8 around the corner, and Android tablets finally maturing enough that they offer a minor threat to the iPad we’re in for a year of fast paced change on all platforms. I predict that 2012 will be one of the most exciting times for tablet PCs in recent memory, and can’t wait to share how all the players try to one up each other.

Sources: DaringFireball, OSX Daily, AndrewWarner, Designer-Daily

10 Comments

10 Comments

    • Anonymous

      09/17/2011 at 5:13 pm

      I may have missed your specific examples, but those fit right in with the Tc1100 as examples of design centric tablets before the iPad.

    • Guest

      12/08/2011 at 9:11 pm

      Not just tablets. The Prada preceded the iPhone. So who copied who?

      • Guest

        12/08/2011 at 9:12 pm

        Sorry, that was meant to be @beaversoc:disqus 

  1. Anonymous

    09/17/2011 at 5:34 pm

    I doubt it , especially since
    – one of my specific examples is a phone …
    – the other one is significatly more bare than your carefully picked ones.

  2. Anonymous

    09/17/2011 at 10:14 pm

    The tech industry media claims perfection of basically all Apple products.  Anything un-Apple is considered inferior.  They define the baseline in the eyes of many.  Doesn’t mean they were the first ones to do something.  It just means they finally did it so now it is the standard.  Had somebody else released something exactly like the iPad before the iPad, nobody would have cared.  Same thing with the iPhone.  Nobody would have bought it.  It would not have become a standard for anything.  A footnote at best.

  3. Yuni

    09/19/2011 at 8:06 am

    nice info, thanks…

    new smartphone

  4. Anonymous

    09/19/2011 at 4:04 pm

    Kindof a douchey, cherry-picked selection of tablets that predated the ipad.

  5. Anonymous

    09/20/2011 at 4:38 pm

    yeeesss……..@…
    I just got a $827.89 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HTV for only $251.92, they are both coming tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prîces at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37″ HTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for. I use https://alturl.com/m55nv

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