How Apple and Samsung tried to win smartphones 11 years ago

Feb 26, 2018 14:01 GMT  ·  By

At this point, the smartphone world is dominated by Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, but for the majority of users out there, it’s all about the first two.

Samsung and Apple have become the fiercest rivals in the phone wars, despite the Android ecosystem itself boasting lots of other choices, starting with Google’s own devices and continuing with brands like HTC, Sony, OnePlus, and others.

But when it comes to switching from an iPhone to something else, the first choice for many people is a Samsung device. And the same thing for the other way around.

At some level, this perfectly makes sense. Samsung and Apple have been going head to head for many years already not only in terms of sales, but also when it comes to innovation. Every time one of the two companies rolled out a new technology, the other launched its very own alternative on its next flagship, and despite many people called this “copying,” it’s actually how the competition goes.

And competition can only be good for us, the people who actually buy these devices, because without it, the pace at which innovations evolve these days would be substantially slower.

With the release of the iPhone X last year, Apple celebrated the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, a device that many industry analysts believe it was the beginning of the modern smartphone.

The original iPhone

There’s a reason why so many people think the first-generation iPhone was the debut of the smartphone as we know it these days. It’s because Apple itself made a big deal about it, and the company’s slogan at that point was “Apple reinvents the phone with iPhone.”

It was a product that also marked the birth of a super-aggressive marketing push that Apple became famous for over the years, and which eventually proved to be super-successful. The original iPhone was also the first smartphone to bring us huge waiting lines in front of Apple stores, as thousands of Americans wanted to make sure they grab the device on day 1.

How the iPhone was born is a story that many Apple aficionados know already. Development of the handset started in 2005 when CEO Steve Jobs decided to build a device with a touchscreen and without the need for a physical keyboard or any other input methods than touch. Early prototypes envisioned a device as big as a tablet, but Steve Jobs later decided to push the project even further and bring the same technology to a phone.

Original iPhone
Original iPhone
Original iPhone
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Originally, the iPhone was internally codenamed Project Purple 2 and was developed with help from AT&T, the company that exclusively sold it in the first years.

Two years later, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs officially announced the iPhone, with sales beginning on June 28, 2007. Apple invested millions in a marketing campaign for the iPhone, trying to make Americans aware that a smartphone was on its way, and all these efforts paid off judging from the huge crowds in front of Apple stores on launch day.

Samsung’s 2007 smartphone

Back in 2007, Samsung wasn’t a company as big as it is today, and phones represented only a very small part of its business worldwide.

With Android unveiled in 2008, but with the only model released in September 2008, Samsung was at that point committed to another mobile operating system.

And Microsoft fanboys will certainly love to hear this. Samsung was investing hard in Windows Mobile at that point, and its 2006 and 2007 phones were running Microsoft’s platform.

Called BlackJack (also known as SGH-i607), Samsung’s 2006 smartphone was powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 (later upgraded to version 6.0) and available in the United States through AT&T – just like the iPhone, and in Australia at Telstra.

Samsung BlackJack II
Samsung BlackJack II
Samsung BlackJack II
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The BlackJack itself caused lots of controversies when launched, as it was the subject of a dispute between Samsung and Research in Motion (also known as RIM), the owner of BlackBerry, which claimed that the name of the phone was misleading and tricked people into believing they were buying a BlackBerry.

A successor to this model launched in 2007 as Samsung BlackJack II (also known as SGH-i617 or Samsung Jack/SGH-i616 in Canada, the home market of BlackBerry), this time powered by Windows Mobile 6, later upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1.

In case you’re wondering, Samsung’s first Galaxy model (GT-I7500), the ancestor of today’s Galaxy S lineup, the top rival to Apple’s iPhone in 2018, launched in June 2009 with Android 1.5 (Cupcake) or 1.6 (Donut) depending on the market.

The first Samsung Galaxy S version (known as i9000) was unveiled in March 2010 and went on sale in June the same year with Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and TouchWiz 3.0, the first public version of Samsung’s own user interface.

Original iPhone vs. Samsung BlackJack II

When it comes to putting the two models side by side, the only way to do is to compare the original iPhone with the Samsung BlackJack II, and not the previous model. The iPhone went on sale in June 2007, while Samsung’s model hit the shelves in October the same year.

Since Android wasn’t available at that point, Samsung was all about Windows Mobile, so the BlackJack II launched, just like its predecessor, with Windows Mobile 6.0. Apple’s smartphone, on the other hand, was released with the first version of iOS, and then received upgrades up to version 3.1.3.

First and foremost, the displays of the two. Apple was betting all-in on a full-touch display, with just one button at the bottom of the screen just like all the other iPhone models launched since then, except for the iPhone X. Samsung, instead, was using a QWERTY keyboard, so its screen was rather compromised.

In terms of specs, the original iPhone came with a 3.5-inch TFT display with 16 million colors and Gorilla Glass coating, boasting a screen-to-body ratio of 52% (it’s amazing to see how much tech has evolved lately, given that the iPhone X reached 82.9%!).

Samsung’s BlackJack II, on the other hand, sported a 2.4-inch TFT screen with just 65K colors, having a screen-to-body ratio of just 25.7%. The resolution was nearly the same, but the small difference was mostly caused by the different aspect ratio: 3:2 on the iPhone and 320x480 px versus 4:3 on the Samsung and 320x240 px.

When it comes to the processor, Apple’s original iPhone was running on a 412 MHz ARM 11 chipset, while Samsung used an older ARM 9 model clocked at 260 MHz and paired with 128MB RAM. Only 256 MB storage was offered on Samsung’s model, while the iPhone could be ordered with as much as 16GB.

Neither phone came with a front-facing camera because at that point selfies didn’t really exist, and both featured a 2-megapixel rear camera, obviously with terrible performance, but stunning for that time. On the other hand, Samsung’s model did support video recording, while the iPhone did not.

Funny enough, however, Apple used a headphone jack on the iPhone, while the Samsung BlackJack II lacked this feature – in the meantime, Apple became one of the first companies to abandon this feature on its smartphone.

Features like NFC were things of the future at that point, but instead, Apple did equip the iPhone with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, while Samsung’s phone only featured the latter. Samsung scored extra in the GPS section, as the iPhone lack such capabilities.

As far as the battery goes, it’s interesting to observe that iPhones haven’t evolved so much from the original model. The 2007 iPhone launched with a 1400 mAh unit, while the 2017 iPhone 8 comes with an 1821 mAh pack, so Apple spent more time optimizing the software rather than on improving the battery capacity.

When it comes to pricing, Apple’s iPhone was super-expensive from the very beginning. The starting price for the 8GB model was $599, followed by a major price cut to just $399 during the 2007 holiday season, whereas the Samsung BlackJack II was available for only $149.99.  

iPhone BlackJack II
Display 3.5-inch display 16M colors 2.4-inch TFT 65K colors
CPU ARM 11 412 MHz ARM 9 260 MHz
RAM 128 MB 128 MB
Storage 4 - 16 GB 256 MB
Battery 1400 mAh 1700 mAh
Bluetooth Yes Yes
Wi-Fi Yes No
OS iOS Windows Mobile 6
Price $599 $149.99

The bottom line

While right now Samsung is the world's number one phone maker, way ahead rival Apple, the 2007 smartphone race was completely different.

By the looks of things, Apple was really ahead of its competitors and although availability of the original iPhone was more or less constrained, the technology that the company developed coupled with advanced software gave it an important lead in the battle 11 years ago.

Without a doubt, Google's involvement in the smartphone market was what helped Samsung become number one, and Android was exactly what companies looking into handsets hoped it to be. Without Google's game-changing strategy, Apple would have been by far the leading smartphone company worldwide, though without fierce rivals, it's hard to tell where iPhones would have been in 2018.

In the end, it's amazing to see how much technology has evolved in just one decade, and it'll certainly be interesting to observe how it improves even further in the next 10 years. As to how phones are going to be ten years from now, share your predictions in the comment section below.

Photo Gallery (14 Images)

Original iPhone versus Samsung BlackJack 2
Samsung BlackJack IISamsung BlackJack II
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