Form always has a function even if it’s only in the abstract of what the form is or isn’t. In this case I can only hope Samsung turns around and says “how can we efficiently show widescreen content on anything other than a rectangle?”.

What really bugs me about all this is I thought pattens existed to protect work that was not just obvious next step that many people where arriving at around the same time. A special leap in what is actually more the cause of a technological evolution than anything else. As the environment made high quality wide screen content (games or film or otherwise) something that you could run and store or stream to a small wireless device then it’s obvious that the best design for that device is a large touch screen with minimal other form factor.

You want the biggest screen space for the smallest form because it needs to fit in peoples pocket. Given that it is intended to go in peoples pockets you don’t want sharp edges or forms that don’t sit flush in the pocket. Wallets are relatively flat with out pointed corners made out of soft material for a reason.

That is not a genius next step that needs protection it’s the obvious result of producing phones best suited for the environment they are used in and the environment they are used for.

It reminds me of the story of “who designed the cowboy hat”. The hat developed out of the mass of random hats that people took to the gold rush. Out of all the hats some are better suited t the environment than others and become more prevalent and then over time a number of different people made changes to that design to produce the hat as we understand it.

That cowboy hat or a hat very much like it would have appeared at that time for use by those people regardless of the individual hat makers. There was no massive leap that needed to be made from the hats of the time to a the kind of hat required, no massive change in hatmaking technology. It was simply “cowboy hat” time in a “cowboy hat” environment.

As much as it may hurt people egos most scientific and as such technological development is inevitable and happens in a predefined patten. Given what we know, we have a given level of technology that makes sense to be produced from that understanding and that technology and understanding will prime an obvious next step in development.

There is room for individual brilliance and leaps in understanding or technology may come early but they will come. Rewarding with pattens ideas and technology that are a leap rather than a step is an understandable way to try and promote faster technological advance as this is of benefit to a state in any number of ways. Yet if we allow people to tie up every little step we risk stalling everything and allowing states not hindered by a regard for these laws to get ahead.

My point I guess is that there was no brilliant leap in the form of the iphone. It’s arguably (I guess) one of the best implementations of a this set of design ideas and was very much the most popular one. It was the first phone to really open up this step, it was the right phone in the right place at the right time, but it wouldn’t have taken that step if the market was not ready for it and it’s clear from phone designs at the time that we were converging on this design anyway.

Widescreen content was a thing before the Iphone. Technology that made it possible and piratical to store and use high quality wide screen content on small device existed before the Iphone. Portable media players were a thing before the Iphone. Convergent devices were a thing before the iphone. Touchscreen on phones was a thing before the iphone.

In that environment what are the obvious outcomes of future phone design? Firstly high quality media would require a big screen. Given the costs and the fact it had to fit in a persons pocket you are pretty limited on the best size and shape for a screen IE about the size of the iphones screen (the S3, which I use, is pushing it for the use size of a phone screen). Now given that you don’t want to make the phone any bigger or any wider than you have to given people have to carry it around and hold it to their ear then reducing the space that isn’t taken up by screen is a obvious must. The best way around this is touch screen interface which is much more efficient in it’s use of space. Now for the shape again you are trying to limit the form as much as you can, so you make it the shape of your screen and you round of the edges because THAT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH PHONES AND HAVE ALWAYS DONE WITH PHONES BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT TO POKE PEOPLE IN THE GOD DAMN LEG! (even a phone with the name “razor” was rounded!)

So in a world where high quality media can be used on a small device, in which widescreen is a thing and phones are designed to be as small and slim as they can be (with rounded none poke based edges) and in which portal media players have a history… a phone that looks like the iphone is not only inevitable it’s the only logical next step. Apple simply made that step better than the competitors at the game and their reward for that was getting to be the break out product for the next generation of phones… it should not bet getting to own the simple and obvious next step in phone design.