Comment by Izkata

Phones were already going in that direction before the iPhone was released: https://phys.org/news/2007-02-samsung-unveils-revolutionary-...

But it was generally seen as a gimmick instead of desired before Apple made it look good. Even when the iPhone came out, one of the jokes was how the grid of icons looks like how a Windows user's desktop would look like when they didn't understand the filesystem.