iPhone 4 Turns 10: 'Stop Me If You've Already Seen This'

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 and FaceTime at WWDC 2010 in San Francisco.

A few months prior to the keynote, photos of a prototype iPhone 4 were leaked by Gizmodo after an Apple engineer accidentally left the device behind at a bar in Redwood City, California, leading Jobs to quip "stop me if you've already seen this."

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iPhone 4 featured an all-new design with a glass and stainless steel unibody and squared edges, with Jobs describing it as the thinnest smartphone ever at the time. It was also the first Apple product to feature a higher-resolution Retina display, with an average person unable to see individual pixels on the screen from an average viewing distance.

While its design was acclaimed, it was soon discovered that the iPhone 4 could experience signal drop when gripped in a way that blocked the antennas built into the frame. Jobs downplayed the issue in a press conference, noting that all smartphones have antenna weak spots, but Apple did offer a free bumper case to customers that helped to mitigate the problem. The following year, the iPhone 4S featured significant antenna upgrades.

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Later in the keynote, Jobs introduced FaceTime, which he demonstrated by having a video call with Apple's recently departed design chief Jony Ive. Apple initially planned to make FaceTime an open standard, but that never happened, with some reports having claimed that patent lawsuits are at least partly to blame.


Rumors suggest that squared edges will make a comeback on iPhone 12 models later this year — a fitting way to mark the 10th anniversary of the iPhone 4.

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Top Rated Comments

boswald Avatar
61 months ago
Miss you, Steve.
Score: 52 Votes (Like | Disagree)
quagmire Avatar
61 months ago

Looks so outdated, at the time though it was the best looking phone one could get.
Still the peak of iPhone design IMHO. It wasn't until the iPhone X where an iPhone design has come close to matching the iPhone 4 era for me.
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MacDevil7334 Avatar
61 months ago
Still my favorite iPhone design to this day. The silver and black combo was so slick and I loved the little details like the +/- etching on the volume buttons or the black ring around the headphone jack. It just felt like such a massive step up from previous iPhones in pretty much every way.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
miketcool Avatar
61 months ago
I still have mine. It boots up and runs well!
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
otternonsense Avatar
61 months ago
Good times, when we've had a 2-year cadence of actually innovative iPhone releases under a visionary leader. It's a shame this powerhouse of a device got embedded in collective memory as the "you're holding it wrong" phone.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
61 months ago
Chirst, remember how much people complained when the new design was leaked?

EDIT: MacRumors tweeted the original thread.

[MEDIA=twitter]1270032761903087621[/MEDIA]
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)