The history of the iPhone: A look at Apple’s smartphone evolution

The firstBlackBerrycame to be in 1999. Similarly, T-Mobile’s first Sidekick phone was launched in 2002. Microsoft entered the picture in 2003 with Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition (long name, right?). Palm, Nokia, Samsung , and Motorola also tried to put together theirsmartphones.


These phones could make calls and texts, too, but they started to venture into the world of the almighty internet.These were more so made to work with styluses. Steve Jobs saw this early on and believed that phones would eventually replace things like cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, etc. He started believing that phones with a touchscreen and internet access were the future, so the idea behind the iPhone sparked.


It seems the beginnings of the iPhone were a bit rocky, though. Tony Fadell once told Venture Beat the first iPhone concept was actually an iPod with a phone module. the palm of your hand. Jobs assembled a small team of experts to begin working on what would later become the iPhone. They called it “Project Purple,” and the team practically lived at the company’s headquarters. touch-enabled Mac, and they were messing with a multi-touch ping pong table, which Steve wanted to put “in an iPod.” At the same time, they were trying to make video watching more enjoyable on iPods, which is why they wanted to add a larger screen and remove the touch scroll wheel.


After long hours, weekends, and hard work, the first iPhone came to be in 2007.

iPhone — iPhone 3GS: The start of a new era 

There was virtually nothing like the iPhone before it. The first iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007, and was extraordinary.
As Steve Jobs put it then, the iPhone was “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.”

It was the first to have such a high screen-to-body ratio, offering a 3.5-inch screen with a capacitive touchscreen. This made it possible to control every aspect of the device using your fingers, and it even provided multi-touch support.
The accelerometer and motion sensor made it easy to have the screen orientation change when the phone was turned sideways. This made the first iPhone a fantastic content consumption device. You could enjoy videos and other content on a wide screen.


The UI was simple, showing a list of icons for each app, and third-party developers could make apps for all iPhone users. The interface was so good that even today’s iPhones largely use the same UI, just with obvious aesthetic and feature improvements over the years.


Steve Jobs was obsessed with keeping the experience clean and simple.He didn’t entirely trust developers yet, so the first iPhone came with no app store.You could only use the apps Apple offered.The Apple App Store was introduced later, in 2008 , with the iPhone 3G. The newer device was otherwise very similar. The other main improvement was the addition of 3G data speeds.
The iPhone 3GS later refined the experience in 2009 by adding more power to the device. The internals were beefed up with a better processor, more RAM, a better 3.15MP camera, and the addition of a white color variant.


Phone 4 — iPhone 4S: Refining the design, the introduction of Siri, and Retina Displays

The 2010 iPhone 4 got the first significant design change. The sides, back, and front were flattened, and the back was made of glass, offering a more modern and streamlined look. Specs were also significantly better. A 1.0GHz Cortex-A8 processor powered the device, and RAM was again doubled to 512MB. The camera sensor got a boost to 5MP, and users could record at 720p! Not only that, but this was the first iPhone to come with a front-facing camera (VGA).
Additionally, this was the first phone with a Retina Display. This quadrupled the pixels in the iPhone 3GS screen, bringing the definition to 640 x 960. Apple claimed your eyes could no longer notice pixels at this 330ppi pixel density. Apple stuck with around the Same pixel density until the iPhone X, long after Android phones had moved on to bigger and higher resolution displays.Siri could work with your calendar, texts, calls, weather, reminders, and a few other apps.The most human thing it could do was probably tell jokes.These days, you can almost have a conversation with digital assistants, still it was a good start.


iPhone 5 — iPhone 5S: Larger screen, Lightning port, and Touch IDThe iPhone 5 series came with some more significant changes in 2012.

The device’s looks were pretty different, as it now came with an aluminum back.he new iPhone series had more than fresh looks going for it, though.
The phone’s shape was taller because the phone now came with a larger 4-inch display that only grew vertically (640 x 1136). This was because Apple loved its devices’ width, which was great for one-handed use. keep the phone as wide as previous versions, but the market for larger-screen phones was all the rage. Everyone wanted a larger screen on an iPhone, and it finally came.
This was also the first phone to get rid of the old 30-pin connector. The more clunky port was easier to damage and was a bit on the large side, at least compared to the standard back then, which was MicroUSB. Of course Apple still stuck to its own proprietary cable, using lightning cables. 
The iPhone 5S was released a year later in 2013 and offered a game-changing feature. It was the first iPhone to come with Touch ID, a fingerprint reader located in the home button.


iPhone 6 series — iPhone 7 series: Plus models, large screens, Apple Pay, IP rating, multiple cameras, goodbye headphone jack


The 2015 iPhone 6S series was more of an incremental upgrade with slight hardware improvements. Similarly, the iPhone 7 series didn’t bring any noticeable changes in 2016, but it was the first iPhone to get an official IP rating. 7 series featured an IP67 rating.


Camera enthusiasts were thrilled to learn the iPhone 7 Plus was the first iPhone to get more than one rear camera. It had two 12MP sensors, one with a wide lens and another with a telephoto lens.
On the other hand, audiophiles remember the iPhone 7 series devices as the first to dump the headphone jack. Dongles have been your only solution for wired listening since then.


iPhone SE — Apple’s first true budget phone


Apple never really made affordable phones. The iPhone 5C was a bit cheaper, but nothing game-changing. Things changed with the first iPhone SE (2016), which came with an impressive $249 MSRP. the older iPhone 5 than more modern iPhones. The screen also shrunk down to just 4 inches. The good news was that specs were still nearly as good as higher-end iPhones. It had the same Apple A9 processor found in the iPhone 6S series, 2GB of RAM, and a 12MP camera. This was the beginning of a new trend, and iPhones were no longer only for the premium market.


iPhone 8 series — Wireless charging enters the gameThe 2017 iPhone 8 and 8 Plus were the first iPhones with wireless charging.

Again, Apple was a bit late to the party, as we started seeing Qi wireless charging in smartphones as soon as 2012. The Nokia Lumia 920 was the first widely available smartphone to feature it. The Samsung Galaxy S3 could also take advantage of wireless charging with an added accessory.
Design-wise, the phones returned to the glass backs we saw in previous iPhones. Another significant upgrade was the addition of True Tone technology, a method that utilized sensors to measure ambient light and adjust the screen to its surroundings.
While a bit underwhelming, the iPhone 8 series was the proliferation of the old iPhone. A new era was about to begin, and the changes started the same year.iPhone X, XR, and XS—All-screen front, Face ID, IP68Apple later (in 2018) released the iPhone XR, a more affordable version of the iPhone X. It switched the frame material to aluminum (as opposed to stainless steel), removed the OLED panel and replaced it with an LCD one, and left only a single camera in the back. The device was still plenty powerful, though. The processor was upgraded to an Apple A12 Bionic, it keeps the same 3GB of RAM, and the display is larger at 6.1 inches.


The betteriPhoneXS series came out in 2018. Aside from a larger 6.5-inch display in the Max version, and more RAM, it was the first phone to feature an IP68 rating, which is still the standard for the best ingress protection available on smartphones.


iPhone 11 series — iPhone 13 series: Today’s iPhonesThe iPhone 11 line-up was also the first to offer three devices: 

iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. The Pro versions were also the first to have a triple-camera system.
The iPhone 12 series was the first to introduce a Mini version, which was a relief for small phone fans. All other high-end phones were enormous. These were also the first iPhones to get 5G data speeds, which was a welcomed improvement.
As for the iPhone 13 series, all phones look almost identical to the iPhone 12 variants. Improvements were only incremental, showing better specs across the board. We expect things to get much more exciting with the upcoming iPhone 14 series.