Ten years ago, Steve Jobs announced what has become Apple’s most profitable and defining product: the iPhone. Today, the iPhone is one of the most popular and easily recognized devices, but back then it was a radical departure from anything else on the market. At the time, there was no guarantee it would succeed. The first iPhone was cutting-edge in some ways — it was the first smartphone to feature a capacitive touchscreen as a primary method of input, and its screen, while small by today’s metrics, was significantly larger than any other device in the US.
But the first iPhone was limited as well. There was no 3G support and no carrier options — you either signed up with AT&T or you didn’t buy an iPhone. It wasn’t really geared towards power users, the keyboard wasn’t as good as a physical device (this, at least, hasn’t changed), and it was expensive relative to other devices, which often offered more features and flexibility. In their initial review of the device, published in June 2007, Ars Technica wrote:
It’s clear to us that the iPhone wasn’t meant, at the outset anyway, as a smartphone for smartphone people (who typically end up being business people). Instead, the iPhone was meant as a smartphone for everyone else: average people who, until now, had no reason or motivation to get a BlackBerry or something similar that may have been more difficult to use and had way too many features for the average phone user. But the concept of the iPhone doesn’t just appeal to average users; it appeals to everyone, including business users.
Even the App Store, which has become an iconic part of Apple and driven much of the iPhone’s success, didn’t exist when the device launched. You could argue the iPhone wasn’t really a smartphone at launch, because it didn’t run native third-party apps. Jobs’ original plan was for all iPhone apps to run through Safari using Web 2.0 (remember when that was a buzzword) and AJAX-enabled websites. This was a controversial move that was seen as limiting both the performance of applications on the iPhone as well as limiting the types of applications that could be developed for the platform. Jobs would later relent on this issue, and a full SDK for iPhone development dropped in the spring of 2008.
We’ve put together a slideshow of each of Apple’s devices and the major advances that each delivered.
-The iPhone (later referred to as the iPhone 2G) offered 4GB or 8GB of storage and relied on a Samsung 32-bit ARM core. It had 128MB of RAM and a 320×480 screen.
-The iPhone 3G was slightly larger than the 2G and swapped the metal-and-aluminum back of its predecessor for polycarbonite. It offered 3G connectivity, improved headphone compatibility, and either 8GB or 16GB of storage. The CPU and GPU clocks were the same, but faster 3G speeds improved the phone’s overall performance when surfing the web or accessing data over mobile networks. It launched on July 11, 2008.
-The iPhone 3GS was the first major update that boosted CPU and GPU performance. This was the first iPhone to use a Cortex-A processor (one Cortex-A8 clocked at 600MHz, compared with an older 32-bit RISC core at 412MHz on the iPhone and iPhone 3G). Total performance was up to 2x faster than previous iPhones. This device used a PowerVR SGX535 GPU and 256MB of DRAM. The 3GS was the first iPhone to offer up to 32GB of storage and launched on June 19, 2009.
-The iPhone 4 was a number of ‘firsts’ for Apple. It overhauled the physical design of the smartphone, added a new, high-resolution “Retina”-class display, introduced Apple’s first custom silicon (though not a custom CPU core, that came later), and was infamous for “antennagate.” Most human contact with the smartphone reduced antenna strength and Apple offered affected users bumpers to offset this issue. The iPhone 4 was the first iPhone to include dual cameras and the last to feature a single-core processor (1x Cortex-A8 clocked at 800MHz).
-The iPhone 4S was Apple’s first dual-core device, based on an 800MHz Cortex-A9. It also has the dubious distinction of being announced on the same day that Steve Jobs died. Siri debuted on the iPhone 4S, and it supported HSDPA+, though not LTE. The GPU was upgraded with this model, from an SGX535 to an SGX543, with dramatically improved GPU performance.
-The iPhone 5 was Apple’s first response to the big-phone craze beginning to sweep the Android market. It lengthened the phone’s display to 4 inches, up from 3.5-inches and added LTE support, Apple’s Lightning port, and the first custom CPU core design from Apple, nicknamed Swift. The iPhone 5c was functionally identical to the iPhone 5, but used an all-plastic housing available in a wider range of colors.
-The iPhone 5s added TouchID for biometric authentication and was Apple’s first 64-bit smartphone. This device also used a new, custom CPU architecture (Cyclone) and also featured a revamped iOS version (iOS 7) with a very different GUI than previous Apple smartphones.
-The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were Apple’s first attempt to target the big phone market head on. They proved popular, but early concerns about the smartphone’s tendency to bend proved prophetic. This device has failed in large numbers thanks to Apple design flaws that the company was aware of, but continues to refuse to address in a satisfactory manner. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus used another new Apple CPU core (Typhoon) and both featured 1GB of LPDDR3 memory.
-The 6s and 6s Plus both featured improved construction, which mitigated the “touch disease” that afflicts the iPhone 6, as well as faster cores and stronger overall performance. The iPhone 6s and 6s both added haptic feedback, use Apple’s Twister CPU architecture, and bumped total memory up to 2GB, from 1GB.
-Apple’s most recent smartphone, the iPhone 7, removed the Home button altogether in favor of tactile feedback, but the bulk of the discussion around the phone has focused on Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack. Apple called this move “courageous,” while pretty much everyone else called it a “damned nuisance.” Apple does, however, sell some attractive white plastic earrings for $170 if you’re looking for a product that has only a modest chance of fitting your ears, yet advertises how plugged in to Apple’s ecosystem you are. The iPhone 7 also features Apple’s A10 Fusion CPU, the first Apple design with a pair of high-power and low-power cores for optimal efficiency and performance.
Apple is reportedly working on delivering a major update with the iPhone 8, with OLED screens widely rumored to make an appearance on at least some models. The new phone is also expected to use 10nm chips from TSMC, which should help reduce power consumption and improve battery life, though how much improvement we see may depend on how OLED technology compares to the next generation of LCD screens. Screen power is one of the most important factors in device power consumption and while OLEDs can be more power-efficient than LCDs, this typically depends on how much of the screen is black. Unlike LCDs, OLEDs can turn off pixels that aren’t displaying color, whereas LCDs depend on backlights that are always on whether the screen background is black or not.
Whatever Apple builds for its tenth anniversary, its unlikely to be as defining as the original iPhone was 10 years ago. Smartphone evolution has slowed of late, as the majority of devices are now capable of just about any workload or task we throw at them. H.265 / HEVC decode has already been added to top-end devices, and the tech industry has generally moved on to attempting to push wearables as a new market that could take off the way smartphones did (no company, including Apple, has enjoyed any success in this endeavor).
Still, the iPhone has had a heck of a journey from its initial unveil to the new iPhone 7. We salute Apple for seeing the opportunity for a new type of device and seizing it.
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