As the iPhone’s 10th anniversary approaches, we look back at one of the most iconic electronic devices in history., High-End Smartphones
As the iPhone’s 10th anniversary approaches, we look back at one of the most iconic electronic devices in history. When Steve Jobs, standing on stage at the 2007 Macworld conference in San Francisco, famously proclaimed “Apple is going to reinvent the phone”, no one could have guessed the impact his subsequent announcement would have. Apple had gathered the best minds the company could muster, a team of 1,000 engineers, to work in secret on a three-year long mission known internally as ‘Project Purple 2’. The culmination of this work would finally be released to the world on 29 June 2007 as the iPhone, setting a standard in mobile design that would remain relatively unchanged for almost a decade. The smartphone market was by no means small in 2007. Companies like Nokia and Motorola were battling it out in the consumer space where mobiles were mainly used for calling and texting, while Blackberry, Ericsson, and Microsoft were attracting attention from business customers who wanted the functionality of a PDA. Instead of competing directly with either sector, Apple carved out its own space to offer something entirely different. While technically not the first mobile device to feature a touchscreen, (an honour held by Ericsson R380) the iPhone was the first to eschew a stylus, a physical keyboard, or navigation panel entirely. By providing advanced computing capabilities at the touch of a finger, it redefined the way we interacted with our mobile phones. It also pioneered a range of features that are considered industry standards today: multi-touch gestures like ‘pinch zooming’, a glass screen, predictive typing and a gyroscope to automatically detect landscape or portrait modes. The phone was powered by a 32-bit ARM-based Samsung processor clocked at 620 MHz, used a fairly beefy 128MB of RAM, and featured a 3.5in screen at a resolution of 320×480 – the only sign of traditional input was a square shaped home button at the bottom. It also came with 4GB or 8GB of storage and a bunch of sensors that meant brightness would be automatically adjusted and the screen would turn off when used for a call. In other words, it was a powerhouse that offered something entirely different to what had come before. Yet the ‘Jesus Phone’, as it was dubbed by some media outlets at the time, was handicapped by a lack of 3G network connectivity, then the fastest connection available. It also lacked video recording, third-party apps, and GPS. Despite the revolutionary design, Apple managed to sell just over 6 million iPhones during its first year, significantly behind the 15 million Nokia achieved with the 6500 Slide or 3110 Classic. The initial concept was there, but it had yet to be the disruptive force that Jobs had envisaged. The iPhone also had its critics, and while some made claims about longevity and impact that would ultimately prove to be embarrassingly inaccurate, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer perhaps put it best when he said: “You can get a Motorola Q for $99.Apple will have the most expensive phone, by far, in the marketplace. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” While he would ultimately be proved wrong, Ballmer did hit on the fact that the market at the time wasn’t ready for such an expensive device, regardless of how revolutionary it was. Apple recognised this, and with the launch of the iPhone 3G, cut the contract price from $499 to $199. Alongside the addition of 3G connectivity, this helped the iPhone 3G leapfrog to the number one bestseller spot in 2008. Although today’s iPhone, currently the iPhone 7, stands in stark contrast to Apple’s original model, with the latest graphical and processing chips and a resolution that dwarfs its predecessors, the fundamental design philosophy has remained unchanged over the last 10 years. It’s still entirely screen-centric and every new iteration has made it easier and more enjoyable to use a touchscreen as the primary input. Its iconic design has turned it into one of the most recognised electronic devices on the planet, with over 1 billion iPhones sold to date. Technical specs and design choices aside, one of the iPhone’s greatest legacies is the way it changed how we viewed mobile phones. It was a catalyst of a slow market transformation that would take the mobile device into the same bracket as a luxury watch or high-end television. Today, a person’s smartphone is often their most expensive accessory and for better or worse, you have the iPhone to thank for that. Of course the value that people attribute to smartphones today is not just the result of clever marketing; the iPhone started the technological revolution that is the mobile app. Apple announced support for third-party applications alongside the reveal of the iPhone 3G, and with the launch of the App Store a month later, developers were able to sell their work directly to customers – a first for a mobile platform. Initially offering 500 applications, this soon ballooned to 50,000 by the following year – today there are over 2.2 million. Applications are where the real functionality of a smartphone lies. The first thing we do with new smartphones today is download WhatsApp, Facebook, our favourite travel and weather apps… things we use on a daily basis that have become fundamental to our mobile experience. When Apple made it possible for companies to build and market apps directly to customers, it suddenly opened the door to possibilities never before considered on a mobile device – who would’ve thought back then that we would end up paying for goods with a tap of our smartphones. It’s precisely the lack of app support on Blackberry and Windows mobiles that has meant they’ve struggled to remain relevant. While subsequent generations of iPhone have refined the original idea, Apple has been criticised for its lack of innovation in recent years. Processors get faster, graphics chip can pump out more pixels, and devices get thinner and lighter, but fundamentally the overall feel has remained the same. Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007, and has done comparatively very little in the time since to shake up the market – the iPhone 5 was considered “boring” by some commentators at the time. The most dramatic visual change over the years has been 2017’s theme of edge-to-edge displays, removing the last vestige of a physical navigational button. Yet the first example of this came from market leader Samsung, leaving Apple playing catchup and knocking the wind from its sails ahead of its next launch. For Apple to gain ground over the next few years, it will need to address the issues around component supply.
