Adding to the tedium, I just have to make a couple of points in response to that bogus timeline. First of all, that timeline is wrong because placing the Samsung F700 in December 2007 is a lie. The F700 was designed by Samsung in August 2006 before the iPhone was made public; Samsung got a Korean design patent for F700 that was filed in December 2006 before ANY of the iPhone patents were filed; the F700 was announced and shown at the Barcelona consumer electronics fair in February 2007, which was a month after the iPhone was announced; and it was first released in August 2007 while the iPhone was first released on June 29, 2007.
The large rectangular screens that became available first with resistive touch technology and then with capacitive touch technology dictated that smartphones were going to be rectangular for the most part. Use by humans and storage in pockets dictates rounded outside corners for the most part because they are more ergonomic and approachable. I do not deny that Apple had an impact on how mobile phones looked, but there were rounded rectangle phones at Samsung and elsewhere for years prior to the iPhone. So, it is not correct to say they caused a drastic change -- function dictated the form before and since -- and the scope they claim for their patents is ludicrous.
2004
2005
2006
2007