That’s probably because I used a phone app or browser to make these posts before. Not like there were all that many anyway.

And since I’m so private and secretive, I’m probably not going to change them all that much. Yeah, you’re asking, “Why, if you’re so private, are you posting a blog?” Sort of like in Clerk’s, I may be private, but I like to talk.

What actually prompted me to post here again? It’s laziness of all things.

I’ve read about Apple’s injunctions against Samsung and HTC, presumably regarding them lifting the designs of their phones from the iPhone and it occurred to me: What are the salient design features of the iPhone that make it distinctive and unique?

Here, let’s take a look at the iPhone 4 and an HTC phone side by side (image lifted from Engadget’s article about the HTC injunction request.

The thing about minimalist designs is that there’s not much to them. Duh.

In general the iPhone has edge to edge glass on the front with one large button centered below the screen. The back plastic wraps around to the sides for earlier generation phones thought the iPhone 4 has a black (or white?) glass back with a silver metal sides. (yeah, the first generation was more like a iPod with a metallic, wraparound back with a plastic area on the bottom).

Interestingly, the phone that really looks the most like the iPhone 4 is the LG Prada KE850 which was announced (according to Wikipedia) December 12, 2006- one month before the first iPhone was even revealed.

I’m assuming that no one is going to call the iPhone’s horizontal loudspeaker slit a unique design element. Nor could the rocker volume button be called all that distinctive. The discrete volume buttons of the iPhone 4 seem to have a more industrial look to them, but again, not all that unique- usually a rocker style pair of buttons is used to show that the function of each volume button is interconnected with the other button- it’s almost as if discrete buttons are a step backward in design.

No, about the only distinctive part of the hardware of the iPhone is the front button which no one else uses anyway.

As for the software and the user interface, well, my attention is really starting to wander now, but icons on a screen have been done before on phones (both smart phones and older feature phones) and other small screens such as PDAs, palmtop computers, even touchscreen remote controls.

Okay, the lower dock area in the photo above (shamelessly stolen from MobileBeat) looks like it has been blatantly copied, but even then, the lower dock area is not unique to the iPhone. Earlier PDAs also had launch areas like that silkscreened onto them.

It is unfortunate that Samsung did decide to copy so many design elements from the iPhone, but those were not originally designed for the iPhone or by Apple anyway.

Maybe I like to decouple my interests from my whole social network- or whatever passes as my social network. Anyway, I’m sure some will say that blogging and social networking each fills their own niche.

Okay, so here I am making use of this niche.

Luckily, he was gracious enough to transfer ownership to the first person to ask for it: me.

That was darned kind of him since he had to jump through some hoops to do so. But I do appreciate it.