The First iPhone
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone to the world at the Macworld conference. Apply has sold the first iPhone close to 1.5 billion of them and it was described as “revolutionary” and a “game-changer” for the mobile phone industry. On the day it got announced, Jobs said, “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”
Before the iPhone, smartphones at the time had a design that has a small rectangular handset with a screen on top and buttons on the bottom that resembles Motorola Q. Then, it began to change when the first iPhone was announced.
The first iPhone did not use a physical keyboard unlike most other phones. Instead, the device used brand new technology called multi-touch, a very new and advanced technology at that time. Jobs said, “They all have these keyboards that are there, whether you need them or not to be there, and they all have these controls buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application. What we’re going to do is get rid of these buttons and replace them with a giant screen.”
Also, before the iPhone, it was very common for people to have both a mobile phone and a separate music player. But, Apple added the iPod functionally which could hold music synced with iTunes. This led other manufacturers to start building in a music player to their devices later on. The iPhone became an all-in-one device. It replaced a music player, calculator, Internet communication, mobile phones and many others.
The specs of the first iPhone were a 3.5-inch screen with 480 x 320 resolution for 163ppi and a 412MHz ARM processor. The user interface was built around the device’s multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. It featured a full QWERTY keyboard on a soft touchscreen which led to a reduced size of the screen. Since Apple wanted to make the iPhone a full-screen device, Apple invented a touchscreen that was more accurate and more responsive than any other phone in history. And this type of functionality had never been seen before, and it helped make the iPhone truly unique.
With a large bright touchscreen, the touch sensitive controls had a zooming function with just two fingers and had 4GB or 8GB hard drive. The other defining feature was the functionality as a mobile browser and email client. Before the iPhone came out, accessing the web on your phone required a mobile specific browser. Then, with the iPhone, users were able to access the web using Apple’s Safari browser and other web such as Youtube and Google as well.
However, despite the fact that the first iPhone got mostly positive reviews, it had many flaws and feature omissions. First of all, it ran on “EDGE” or 2G, which was painfully slow. It was slow as home internet and it was more painful because AT&T was the only carrier option available for the first iPhone. It also had no video mode or flash for its camera and no zoom mode as well. Moreover, it had no voice recording, instant message application, no support for Flash or Java and for third-party applications beyond the web browser.
While the iPhone was a revelation when it was released, it still had a long way to go. Therefore, after the first iPhone succeeded, the iPhone 3G was released a year later with 3G functionality, apps and more and the first iPhone was discontinued the same week. In the last 10 years, Apple has been delivering a new model every year with significantly improved capabilities. They sold at least 1.4 billion iPhones during the decade and Apply says over 900 million iPhones are in active use.
The iPhone has become intertwined in our lives because it replaces so many other devices that we carry around daily such as personal communicator, alarm clock, GPS, MP3 players and etc. The first iPhone laid the foundation for the modern smartphone which was a pocket-sized computer that can answer any questions with a couple of touches using your fingertips. Now, everything from the way we work, communicate, travel, ship, manage our finances, and experience entertainment can be done through a smartphone. And the iPhone took a big role in helping change the way we work and play for the last decade. And while the iPhone has changed a lot since its first came out, the foundation that was laid at the start was a good one that ensured success for the years to come.
