It is year 2007, and Steve Jobs is on stage to introduce the most important piece of gadget his company has ever produced, and that device is called the iPhone. After it’s announcement the iPhone sucked the air out of the tech industry as no one has ever seen anything like it ever before. RIM, that was the king of the smartphone world back then considered it to be a toy saying that Apple was lying about the battery life of the device that had a full 3.5-inch touch display. Here we are five years later, RIM, Palm, and others ruined by the disastrous growth of iPhone. Android may be selling more phones than Apple right now, but we all know how iPhone effected Android and helped in making it what it is today. Here in this post we are going to take a look at the glorious five years of iPhone, the journey of the device that disrupted the industry in half a decade.
The original iPhone
In June of 2007, the original iPhone and the iPhone OS 1.0 (now called iOS) was released to general public for the first time. The device had a glossy silver back and a multitouch screen with a few physical buttons. It was a big bet on Apple’s part as the device was released exclusively on AT&T and ran on it’s EDGE network, despite the availabilty of 3G. It was also not available to users with carrier subsidy and users had to pay the full price in order to lay their hands on this mysterious new device. The iPhone was a big success and left the competitors wondering what to do about it.
iPhone offered users an easy way to access their contacts, mail, photos, videos, music and other stuff a lot more easily than the smartphones or the ‘dumbphones’ as they are called available back them. The smartphones were’nt really smartphones, and you needed to be an expert to use them, but that changed with the iPhone and for the good. The original iPhone was the first mobile device that allowed mobile users to access the internet in it’s full form. The devices before the iPhone ran what Steve Jobs rightly called ‘the baby internet’. And offered WAP versions of the websites. iPhone on the other hand provided far more superior experience to the users and with it’s 3.5-inch multitouch screen, the internet on the mobile device changed forever.
Everything about the first generation iPhone was a success and was done like it should have been done, except for two things. Apple didn’t allow third-party apps to run on it’s iPhone and the device didn’t supported AT&T’s 3G network. These mistakes were corrected the very next year with the iPhone 3G.
iPhone 3G
Just one year later after the announcement of the original iPhone, Apple announced it’s successor that was called the iPhone 3G. The device although looked similar to it’s predecessor, featured a new design and better specs. As the name suggests, iPhone 3G ran on the fast 3G network and allowed Apple customers to take advantage of AT&T’s 3G network. It featured a black hard plastic back instead of the silver glossy one found on the original iPhone and was a little more rounded at it’s back. It also featured GPS capabilities that the original iPhone lacked.
But the most important thing Apple announced on the day of iPhone 3G launch was not iPhone 3G itself, but the App Store that was going to provide iPhone users with apps made by third party developers. This single thing changed the course of future for the iPhone and the rest of the mobile industry. Apple released a software development kit for developers along with iPhone OS 2.0.
In a few months time, the App Store was filed with amazing apps that users could download with a single tap. It was for the first time ever that the user could just open a store and find the apps he or she wants and download it without any hassle.
iPhone 3GS
In 2009 Apple introduced iPhone 3GS. Though iPhone 3GS looked exactly like iPhone 3G from outside, it featured much better specs inside. The S in it’s name represented the ‘Speed’. iPhone 3GS featured a faster processor and double RAM than it’s predecessor, improved camera and more. Apple also introduced a white version of the device later.
iPhone 4
In 2010 Apple introduced the device that was equally important to the company as the original iPhone. iPhone 4 featured a complete redesign that was totally different from all three of it’s predecessors. The design iPhone 4 had is still in use by Apple in iPhone 4S. iPhone 4 featured a 1GHz A4 processor, 512MB RAM, 5-megapixel camera, front camera, gyroscope and more.
iPhone 4 was the most controversial iPhone ever, first a prototype got leaked and ended up in the hands of a popular tech site called Gizmodo. Then after it’s release a new controversy started to erupt related to it’s antenna design. The phone had a major hardware design problem that caused the cellular signals to drop when it was held tightly in user’s hand. This issue became a major problem for Apple, but surprisingly didn’t affected the sales as much as every one has been expecting.
iPhone 4 was argueably the first ever smartphone that featured an easy way for users to video chat with their friends. The service was called Facetime and enabled users to call their friends through the Wi-Fi network. Along with iPhone 4, Apple introduced iOS 4 that brought multitasking to iPhone for the first time. The software update also featured Game Center that keeps tracks of user’s acheivements and share them with their friends online.
iPhone 4 was the most succesful iPhone Apple ever released and helped Apple in getting the huge marketshare it enjoys today.
iPhone 4S
iPhone 4S just like iPhone 3GS carried similar design to it’s predecessor but featured big internal changes. iPhone 4S is the first iPhone ever to pack a dual-core A5 chip with a 512MB RAM, an 8-Megapixel camera, and more. To avoid the signal dropping problem, Apple introduced a new antenna design in iPhone 4S, that not only eliminated the signal problem, but also allowed Apple to combine the two GSM/CDMA models and release a single world phone.
The most important and advertised feature of iPhone 4S is Siri, the personal assistant exclusive to iPhone 4S and iPad 3 users. Siri not only made it easier for user’s to perform certain tasks but also opened the doors of artificial intelligence for the mobile industry. Now Google is working on it’s own competitor for Siri, and has released a competing product in the latest Jelly Bean update. Siri allows users to set a reminder, make a call, send an SMS, play music, and other stuff using voice commands. It also responds to user’s questions by intelligently detecting what the user is trying to say.
In the end i would just like to add that whether you like it or not, iPhone has single handedly revolutionized the mobile industry and has made the competition what it is at this moment. iPhone has already lived half a decade and it is safe to assume that is not going anywhere, not in next five years at least.
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