Apple's iPhone that has been introduced a decade ago at MacWorld by Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, is celebrating today its 10-year anniversary.
iPhone's 10-Year Anniversary
According to The Mercury News, despite being used by the global masses over the past decade, the iPhone still has room for improvement. However, it is also true that Apple's mobile device has come a very long way since its first launch 10 years ago, bringing us various technological advancements such as Siri, ever-larger screens, and GPS. The iPhone has changed the way humans learn, navigate, communicate and even live their day-to-day lives.
The iPhone has become so ubiquitous that it can even be difficult to remember what life was like without it. Apple's iPhone represents much more than a device or expert integration of software, components, and design. The popular gadget has become a cultural object with a wide influence.
At the time of the first iPhone launch, Apple had entered a market dominated by Nokia, Microsoft, Palm, and BlackBerry. But even faced with such level of competition, by 2007, Apple had already proven it could disrupt and transform a market.
The Impact Of Apple's First iPhone
There were other touchscreen communication devices before the iPhone, but most of them had physical keyboards. The real work got done on tiny, plastic keys and screens were fine only for the occasional taps and menu selections. Physical controls were required even for gaming. For instance, in order to play Breakout on an old Blackberry Bold, users need a tiny trackball. For drawing on a touchscreen, users needed a stylus.
According to Mashable, being expensive in the range of $499 to $599, the market success of the first iPhone wasn't a certain thing. The mobile device has been available in the beginning on just one carrier, AT&T. It introduced an innovative design since it had no keyboard. The experiment was a risky one for the tech giant since Apple had no phone experience at all.
According to Cult Of Mac, Apple didn't own the "iPhone" name. By 2007 Cisco owned the brand name and sued Apple, but the issue settled before the iPhone shipped. In January of 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone, demonstrating it on stage, but the mobile device went on sale only months later. However, by June of that year, the untested iPhone was already the most talked about gadget in the world.
Jobs handed iPhones to a handful of lucky journalists just prior to shipping the first devices in July. According to the first reviews of Apple's smartphone, it was intuitive, responsive, beautiful and smarter than any other smartphone available on the market back then. It was a clear signal that nothing in the smartphone universe would ever be the same. Apple's iPhone was a big competitor to Microsoft, Nokia, and BlackBerry. And none of these brands would ever truly recover their previous market shares.
First iPhone's Specs
The first iPhone was featuring just one 3.2-megapixel camera. Only later on, by 2010, the iPhone included two cameras, one of them with 5-megapixel resolution and capable of 720p video recording. Consumers used the iPhone camera almost from the start. To this also contributed the fact that the rise of the iPhone coincided with that of mobile social media. Users of iPhones eventually started to share far more images with their mobile communication devices and leave their point-and-shoot digital cameras at home.
The first iPhone also featured the functionality of an iPod inside it. Apple's first smartphone was also a good platform for mobile gaming. Few smartphones were more perfectly built for mobile gaming than the iPhone, with its multiple sensors, large screen, and larger speaker for that time.
