If this is true, then it's hard to give this decision much weight at all. These two phones are vastly different and one literally says SAMSUNG on the front.
Close the keyboard, then look at it. The jury, apparently, decided what their criteria were for infringement and then applied those criteria to all of the phones. The extra fact that this model had a keyboard wasn't one of the criteria.
Let's not assume that we have the whole story behind the way the jury decided anything, one way or the other.
From what I've read so far, the very existence of a full display and a bezel surrounding the front of the phone may have been sufficient in this case for damages.
That's obviously crazy, but that appears to have been criteria used.
I'm reminded of an old joke: "In Soviet Russia reasonable and appropriate considerations are made before awarding 1B in damages based on vaguely similar designs".
Thanks. While I'd like to see Apple gets it teeth kicked in as much as the next guy, the amateur analyses on HN about why the jury is obviously wrong are pretty frustrating to deal with.
I purchased that exact phone, exactly because it wasn't an iPhone, had a keyboard (very important for mobile ssh), and ran Android. I knew exactly what I was buying, no confusion whatsoever. The presence of a keyboard is a significant differentiator between that phone and Apple's products.
Also, I thought the design of the home screen (a grid of icons with labels) also had something to do with it? Both of the linked phones have a grid very much like the iPhone.
icon grids predate the iphone, of course (windows mobile, palm pilot, newton?). I think Apple's claims were more specific, dealing with particular icons, colors, and the favorite apps at the bottom.
Did 16x16 (and then 32x32, and etc etc) icons get patents? Because someone, somewhere, lost a lot of money - and I got consistently sized icons for many years.
EDIT: This isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. See this 2002 article. BT registered a patent in 1976 for "double clicking hyperlinks" (or somesuch), and then in 2000 they realised that they owned this patent, and a bunch of people were clicking hyperlinks on the WWW, and they started suing people. They lost.
If this is true, then it's hard to give this decision much weight at all. These two phones are vastly different and one literally says SAMSUNG on the front.