The iPhone 12 Mini Is Why The iPhone 4 Design Came Back
A classic utilitarian design makes a comeback, but there’s a reason for all that utility
When I went to university in 2010, an acquaintance identified me as a fellow nerd. He started to ask me if I was experiencing the same bug with the Facebook iOS app as he was. I had to ruin the moment by saying I didn’t have a smartphone.
I knew that I was missing out on the smartphone revolution, but I still didn’t get an iPhone right away.
A friend later showed me his iPhone 3GS and told me he paid £18.50 ($30) a month for it.
Only then did I realise there was a price point that even I could afford.
My first iPhone 3GS was on O2, a UK network that had a similar exclusivity to AT&T when the iPhone first launched here. The European Commission had (perhaps unfairly) allowed Orange and T-Mobile to merge and form EE, which was instantly the biggest network in the country. It was around that time that new networks were allowed in, so at the end of my contract, I switched to a 4S on the EE network.
I’d skipped two generations, which remains a fairly typical thing to do when you’re locked into these 2-year contracts.
