Did Apple Borrow the iPhone Design from Someone Else?

With any hot, new product, a backlash is inevitable. With Apple's iPhone, which has months to go before arrival on store shelves, the name-calling and cattiness has only just begun. And while many are asking questions about the iPhone's mysteries, the latest speculation has been about its design: Did Apple come up with the touchscreen-and-no-keypad idea all by itself?

Hardly. The touchscreen phone dates back to at least 2003, when a little company called MyOrigo rolled out a surprisingly similar phone. Though it would be considered thick and bulky by today's standards, the MyOrigo mydevice (pictured) featured many of the iPhone's ideas. Naturally, the entire face was a touchscreen without buttons. Punch the appropriate part of the screen and you could make phone calls. Or turn the mydevice on its side and you'd have an instant widescreen display: Like the iPhone, the mydevice had an accelerometer embedded inside it that could recognize which end was "up." The user interface was completely new and customized for the device, which could browse the web, send email, take photos, and play MP3s. Battery life was about nine hours of talk time.

But the mydevice was ahead of its time, and it never found a carrier in the United States. The company went out of existence shortly after sending review units to members of the press... and I have no idea what ultimately became of its staff or its impressive technology.

Late last year, signs of life in the all-touchscreen phone began to flicker again, with BenQ showing off a concept phone that looks startlingly like the iPhone. Yesterday, Engadget noted that an upcoming phone from LG, the KE850, bears even more of the same design features as the iPhone, as well. Unlike the BenQ phone, the KE850 appears likely to be headed to market.

It's interesting to note that various message board comments note that the phones are cool to look at but are hard to use, especially for detail-oriented tasks like sending text messages. I wonder if Apple will avoid these criticisms as iPhone inches closer to reality or if its technology is clever enough to correct these mistakes.

But back to the point: Did Apple steal its design from one or all of these devices? I don't really buy it. For starters, touchscreens aren't new at all, dating back to the original Palm Pilot, which looks surprisingly like the iPhone, if you think about it. Getting rid of the keypad and keyboard is certainly a bold and risky move, but considering no company has had success on the market with a keypad-free phone to date, it would be rather silly for Apple to attempt to copy a design that hadn't proven successful. Apple has also been rumored to be working on various touchscreen products for years.

There's also a time issue: The LG was just announced a month ago, and Apple's probably been working on the iPhone for two years. And when you think about it, how many ways are there to design a cell phone that has no buttons? A large rectangle is about the only thing that comes to mind...which is probably why every single one of these phones looks pretty much the same. (Also, Apple's laptops have basically the same design as every other laptop...and no one's complaining about that.)

Ease up, naysayers. If you can whip up a design of a touchscreen phone that doesn't look like anything else ever conceived, let's talk.

Disclosure: The iPhone is slated to use Yahoo! Mail and oneSearch, which are owned and operated by Yahoo! Inc., which also owns and operates Yahoo! Tech.