(SPOT.ph) In September 2021, Apple officially unveiled the iPhone 13 series—the latest in their line of flagship smartphones, but probably nowhere near the last. These days, the iPhone is as common to see on the street as a pair of blue jeans, but when it was first introduced to the world, it was kind of revolutionary—the beginning of a new wave in tech, one that continues to dominate our day-to-day lives. The very first iPhone was revealed on January 9, 2007 by Steve Jobs himself and this 2022, it's celebrating its 15th anniversary. Yes, believe it or not, the smartphone is almost old enough to drive. In commemoration of its ever-evolving legacy, we look back at the original iPhone and its once top-of-the-line specs. You might be surprised how much it's changed since.
Looking Back on the Very First iPhone Model, Which Turns 15 This 2022
When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, touch-screen phones did already exist, but had yet to become the norm. Where most people still had old-school keypad models (or QWERTY keypads for the particularly tech-savvy), the iPhone had a minimalist interface, one that baffled those used to the range of buttons most mobile phones provided. Up front, there was one home button along with the volume controls as well as a lock-slash-power button on the side and a SIM cartridge up top. Though Apple’s made adjustments to these features—most notably with an all-screen design on models following the iPhone 8—the no-frills interface has remained mostly unchanged in the decade and a half since.
The OG iPhone stood at 4.5 inches in height with a 3.5-inch display and 480 x 320 pixel resolution. To give you an idea of how that would fare compared to their newest models, the smallest iPhone on the market right now (the 13 Mini) is a little over five inches tall with a 5.42-inch display while the the largest model (the 13 Pro Max) is over six inches tall with a 6.7-inch display screen and 2778 x 1284 display resolution. The 2007 iPhone was also much lighter at 135 grams whereas the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini weigh 174 grams and 141 grams, respectively.
These days, we store pretty much our whole lives on our phones—everything from games to photos to work files and beyond—so it only makes sense that even Apple's smallest models start with a 128 GB capacity. It’s hard to imagine we ever survived with less, but believe it or not, the original iPhone was only available at 4, 8, and 16 GB capacities. But then again, that was before smartphones became the single most useful devices in our individual lives.
The 2007 iPhone had a single 2-megapixel camera—lightyears away from the minimum 12-megapixel lenses and multi-cam systems on the latest models. Plus, did you know the first iPhone didn't yet have a front-facing camera? Real ones know you had to turn your phone around and make the back lens face you in order to take a selfie—it wasn't until 2010's iPhone 4 that Apple finally added the front lens.
The OG iPhone was powered by iOS—yes, just iOS. No numbers here; this was the original version. At this time, you still needed to connect your phone to your laptop to sync it to your iTunes—long before music-streaming, wireless data-syncing, and iCloud became commonplace. The 2007 model was also released a few years before 3G (and later LTE and 5G) became widely available, so it was powered by 2G mobile data, but also had Wi-Fi capability. Battery power promised video playback for up to seven hours—in comparison, the iPhone 13 provides up to 10 hours while the iPhone 13 Pro Max can last about 20.
It's pretty crazy to see how far the iPhone—and other smartphones on the market—have come in the last 15 years. We can only imagine what the next decade and a half will bring to technology, which only evolves faster as time goes on. But whatever happens, you've got to give it to the original iPhone. Arguably, almost none of the gadget innovations, social-media platforms, and even careers we know today would exist without it.
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