As we mentioned earlier, Yahoo’s Jason Gilbert this week put together an entertaining article about all of the devices over the year’s that have been labeled “iPhone killers.” While none of the devices obviously “killed” the iPhone, some of them were respectable hits such as the original Motorola Droid and the Samsung Galaxy S II. Others, however, were complete and total bombs incapable of killing nothing except their manufacturer’s bottom lines. Below, we list the 5 worst would-be iPhone “killers” ever.
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No. 5: The Palm Pre
The Palm Pre was actually a very good device for its time and webOS was in many ways a platform ahead of its time. That said, the Pre had one fatal flaw: It launched as an exclusive with Sprint. No phone manufacturer that has any ambitions of “killing” the iPhone should ever do anything so foolish as to sign an exclusivity agreement with Sprint. It’s almost as big of a kiss of death as selling yourself to HP… which Palm also did less than a year later.
No. 4: The HTC Touch
To be fair, this wasn’t a bad little phone for 2007. But it was woefully unprepared to “kill” the iPhone since it featured a badly outmatched Windows Mobile 6.0, a display that was only 2.8 inches big, and a design that was not up to par with Apple’s first-generation iPhone. HTC would have much better luck with Android phones over the next several years but this phone wasn’t what made the company into a major player in the mobile industry.
No. 3: The First Else
Wait, what the hell is The First Else? It was a smartphone developed back in 2009 by plucky upstart Israeli manufacturer Else, Ltd. that The Telegraph labeled “an iPhone killer” before it was even released. And in fact, it never got released to anyone — it died a swift death in 2010 when the company announced that “due to critical delays in deliveries and the current status of the project, the board has now decided to cease any further investment towards manufacturing of the First ELSE mobile device.”
No. 2: The BlackBerry Storm
Oy. This thing.
BlackBerry was still at the top of its game in 2008 when the Storm first came out but it quickly became apparent that making all-touch devices with no physical keyboards was not its strong suit. The phone’s clickable touch display was so gimmicky that it would have even made Samsung blush and its software was insanely buggy and prone to completely crashing for any and all reasons. After owning the Storm for six months, I quickly dumped it for a used BlackBerry Curve and was much, much happier for it.
No. 1: The LG Voyager
Wait, are you serious? Someone actually called this an “iPhone killer?” I mean, it ran on Qualcomm’s BREW software platform. Remember the last time you heard something about BREW? Yeah, exactly.
The person who labeled this device an “iPhone killer,” hilariously enough, was Verizon’s then-CMO who was clearly trying to convince people that the iPhone wouldn’t net AT&T a whole ton of subscribers. Well, we all know how that turned out and Verizon must be kicking itself to this day for passing up on the iPhone when it first had the chance to get an exclusive on it.
