[citation][nom]Belardo[/nom]And in the "10 years before the iPhone"... the awesome Nokia products that have such features in their phone and media players are the.... uh, wait. They have no state-of-the art phones, at least until they build their Windows7 Phones.They make some good phones, but nothing exciting in the past 5+ years.[/citation]
Hardware wise, Nokia have always been at the forefront of the tech curve, it's just the lacklustre OS they used which had such a negative impact.
Even today there aren't many people who could argue they don't have the best camera on the market, the optics and lenses are first rate.
[citation][nom]Ragnar-Kon[/nom]if Nokia had all of these patents out before Apple even created the iPhone/iPad/iPod, then why didn't Nokia create similar products before Apple even released theirs?[/citation]
Because having the patent and then implementing it into hardware cannot be done at the click of a finger, the hardware arms at Nokia were in management chaos before Elop joined and just because they didn't put the hardware on the market first does not give someone else the right to co-opt the tech and sell it first.
And before anyone uses the words "patent troll" just shut up and die right now, Nokia are a recognised "creator" of technology, they don't just sit on patents for the purpose of legal action, i'm sure they would much rather have pushed these ideas out on their own hardware when they got the manufacturing sorted out.