Today Marks the 13th Anniversary of When Steve Jobs Unveiled the Original iPhone

Thursday January 9, 2020 1:10 pm PST by Juli Clover

13 years ago today, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld in San Francisco and surprised the world with the very first iPhone.

Jobs introduced the iPhone as if it were three separate products: an iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. Today, the iPhone is still all of those things, but also so much more.

Apple has sold well over a billion iPhones since 2007, and as of last January, the company's active installed base had hit 1.4 billion devices. Though iPhone sales were down last year, the iPhone continues to be Apple's single most successful product.

original iphone
Apple has steadily improved the iPhone over the years, refining the design over and over again, updating the camera, and adding new biometric features, and all of these changes have made the iPhone even more indispensable in our daily lives. Improvements over the years:

2008: App Store and 3G network support
2009: Personal Hotspot and video recording capabilities
2010: New form factor and Retina display
2011: Siri and iCloud
2012: 4-inch display, Lightning connector, and LTE
2013: Touch ID fingerprint sensor
2014: 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays
2015: 3D Touch, Live Photos, and 4K video recording
2016: Waterproofing, dual-lens camera for iPhone 7 Plus, no headphone jack
2017: No Home button, 5.8-inch OLED full screen display, wireless charging, fast charging, Face ID
2018: 5.8 and 6.5-inch OLED screen sizes, three iPhone lineup
2019: Night mode, triple-lens cameras

Rumors suggest the iPhone is going to see a major overhaul in 2020, with Apple set to debut 5G connectivity, a revamped iPhone 4-style frame design, 5.4, 6.1, and 6.7-inch iPhone sizes, and a time-of-flight laser-based camera system for better depth calculations and AR capabilities.

Tag: Steve Jobs

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Top Rated Comments

Duane Martin

88 months ago

I played with one of the first gen iPhones when it came out. While it was unique, it was also painfully slow and had a tiny low res screen. It was obvious Apple would sell millions of them, but I didn't want one.

Painfully slow? Tiny low res screen? Compared to what?

The original iPhone was not released in Canada but that did not stop a number of my friends from acquiring one. I will never forget four of us crowding around the devise, just wanting to play with it; we were all blown away. The owner then reminded us this was version 1.0 and try to imagine what it would be like going into the future. The world has changed because of the iPhone.

Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)

ActionableMango

88 months ago

Notable quotes from 2007:

"There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
-Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

“It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers. But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it.”
-Jim Balsillie, BlackBerry

“The development of mobile phones will be similar in PCs. Even with the Mac, Apple has attracted much attention at first, but they have still remained a niche manufacturer. That will be in mobile phones as well,”
-Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia

"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
-Ed Colligan, Palm

"There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.”
“What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong.”
“If it's smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.”
- John C. Dvorak, in his column Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone

"I'm never going to pay $500 for a phone."
- Me, owner of an iPhone 3G, 4, 5S, 6S, and 8

Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)