Smartphones were 100% around before 2006, FYI Even some of the “dumb” phones (like the OG Razr) could browse the web, take pictures/video, watch TV, etc. They were just becoming increasingly commonplace as the costs went down.
On a related note, Apple did not invent the smartphone. They just happened to become the first really popular one, thanks mostly to marketing, because the OG iPhone was garbage (it couldn’t even copy and paste) especially compared to Android and WebOS (or even Windows, BlackberryOS, or Garnett - which didn’t look pretty but were more capable than iOS at the time).
It only got good after it stole a ton of features and designs from Android and WebOS (which was a wildly underrated mobile OS that is more or less, what all modern smartphone homescreen interfaces are based on, in fact Android hired the guy who made WebOS’s UI to fix up Android’s interface, which Apple largely copied). Unfortunately for WebOS, it was horribly mismanaged and a real mess on the back end because of said mismanagement, making it a pain in the ass to develop for (meaning, there weren’t many apps).
Smartphones were 100% around before 2006, FYI Even some of the “dumb” phones (like the OG Razr) could browse the web, take pictures/video, watch TV, etc. They were just becoming increasingly commonplace as the costs went down.
On a related note, Apple did not invent the smartphone. They just happened to become the first really popular one, thanks mostly to marketing, because the OG iPhone was garbage (it couldn’t even copy and paste) especially compared to Android and WebOS (or even Windows, BlackberryOS, or Garnett - which didn’t look pretty but were more capable than iOS at the time).
It only got good after it stole a ton of features and designs from Android and WebOS (which was a wildly underrated mobile OS that is more or less, what all modern smartphone homescreen interfaces are based on, in fact Android hired the guy who made WebOS’s UI to fix up Android’s interface, which Apple largely copied). Unfortunately for WebOS, it was horribly mismanaged and a real mess on the back end because of said mismanagement, making it a pain in the ass to develop for (meaning, there weren’t many apps).