The First iPhone: A Historical Perspective

It's hard to believe it's been over 15 years since Apple launched the first iPhone, which revolutionized the smartphone industry and changed tech design forever. In this article, we'll take a look back at the original iPhone, also known as the iPhone (1st generation), and how it compares to today's flagship devices.

One of the most impressive things about the original iPhone is its simplicity. The camera app on the first iPhone was incredibly basic. On one hand, I'm actually pretty impressed that they still look decent even by today's standards. However, on the other hand, you can tell it's basically a webcam. There's noise in every photo, no matter how much light you give it, and it's like splotchy noise. Exposure is impossible to nail, and focus is also nearly impossible to achieve. It's bad, but that's what makes it so incredible. This was one of the major stepping stones to mobile photography, and it's amazing to think about how far we've come since then.

The original iPhone was also incredibly durable. On my hand, I'm actually pretty impressed that they still turn on, boot up, and work after all these years. The battery life is about three hours, which is small compared to today's devices. However, for its time, it was impressive. You can see the software, just like it existed back in the day. There's no touch ID or face ID, just a simple "slide to unlock" mechanism. There's also no control center or notification shade, features that were introduced later on.

I'm particularly fascinated by the original iPhone's technology. If you go back to the internet's wayback machine archive, you can see what Apple's website looked like on that fateful day in 2007 when this thing launched. They called it a "breakthrough communications device," and I have to agree. The addition of an accelerometer was particularly exciting at the time, allowing the phone to detect whether you were holding it portrait or landscape and rotate automatically. This feature is now ubiquitous in smartphones, but it's still impressive to see how far we've come.

In 2007, Apple also introduced the concept of "touch" technology, which has since become the standard for mobile devices. The iPhone was one of the first pieces of tech I ever bought, and it started a revolution that changed the way we interact with our phones. Since then, we've seen the introduction of new features like multi-touch screens, facial recognition, and advanced cameras.

If you're feeling nostalgic or just want to experience what it's like to use an old iPhone, I challenge you to try using one for a week. I think this would be a fun project for another YouTuber or retro tech enthusiast. The idea is to see how you adapt to the limitations of the original iPhone and whether you can still get the job done with its ancient hardware.

Finally, I want to give a shoutout to retro tech, which has been making waves in recent years. Our pilot episode on the original Gameboy was well-received, and we're now finishing six more episodes featuring iconic pieces of retro tech. These episodes will be released at the beginning of December, and I'm really excited for you guys to see them. We spent a lot of time researching these devices and interviewing guests who have worked with them, so it's going to be an epic series.

So, what was your first smartphone? Was it the iPhone or something else entirely? Leave a comment below and let me know! I'll hang out in the comments and chat with you about all things retro tech.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up guys I'm Kim PhD here this is the iPhone 11 pro and this is the iPhone fun fact I've never actually owned a first generation iPhone or a second gen or a 3rd gen the first iPhone I ever owned and reviewed was the iPhone 5s this video it's mainly for fun but it's also for people who make a habit of complaining that this year's phones are just last year's phones plus a few small bumps because if you haven't noticed that's kind of the whole point the whole reason they're coming out with phones over and over again year after year besides trying to make as much money as possible is to offer a small bump and a small improvement in year-over-year and then when you do feel like upgrading it adds up to a larger difference the three or four years after you've finally decided to upgrade these smartphones it's a mature market it's very rare that we get a truly revolutionary new device a revolutionary new smartphone but back in 2007 this was that so I wanted to take a quick look back at a retro phone that I never used the original the iPhone so first thing I'm noticing holding it now in 2019 is its a chunky one you know like this is a really thick phone but it's also really small it honestly feels about half the size of its much much much younger brother and you know generally it's the right shape the rectangle with rounded corners with a flat display these big chrome chamfers big forehead big chin we know that and a physical home button is there and it's kind of rare these days but every corner of this device is actually legitimately reachable that's no problem at all and the iconic two-tone metal and plastic it's super recognizable as this first iPhone you could probably tell as soon as you saw the thumbnail this is of course a used iPhone but it's held up pretty well for a decade plus in people's hands fun fact though we all know most modern smartphones or maybe we don't know but they're hiding their antenna back in the metal frame of the phone and various places you can see it around the phone this first iPhone didn't do that it just put them all down in the bottom half of the phone and made the bottom plastic so that the radios and antennas could go through that passes through plastic better than metal simple as that and then there's the display so while today we have all these huge high-resolution displays six to six and a half inches for a display isn't even blinked at anymore back here in 2007 we're looking at a 3.5 inch 320 by 480 LCD display can you see individual pixels yes yes you can see individual pixels it measures in at officially 163 PPI but it does get surprisingly bright so I'm not even mad at that as soon as you look at it a little bit off axis though or you know even turn it off you can see the huge difference versus the laminated super high-tech high refresh rate OLED panels we have today and that's not even getting into the whole folding phone thing but it's easy to forget the display when this phone first came out was I think the most revolutionary part of the hardware the fact that it was a glass display and it had ten finger multi-touch and that was a big leap for the mobile UI and I remember when this one came out it was on 18 T or singular only and I was a high school kid on Verizon so I couldn't just switch carriers to get it so I had my first smartphone was an iPhone competitor called the LG Voyager and I don't know if you remember that but it was also a touchscreen but it was a resistive touchscreen and it wasn't multi-touch and it was just a very very different experience not all touchscreens are created alike so this was a big deal I did still enjoy the Voyager though I did review it good times this is obviously a touchscreen phone on the front and a multimedia texting device on the inside the bottom of the original iPhone is maybe where it shows us age the most that is the og 30 pin connector and the speaker and microphone down here in those grills which means about the top is where you'll find the headphone jack but not just any headphone jack you can see closely here this is a recessed three-and-a-half millimeter headphone jack so if you had headphones with the right diameter then you were fine but if you had a thicker cable or if you had a certain right angle connector they wouldn't work and you'd have to get an extender basically a headphone jack two headphone jack dongle power button is up at the top volume rocker on the left it stayed this way for a while until they move the power button to the right for the first time in the iPhone 6 and then that's next to Loki one of the most significant Apple designs I think in their mobile history because something they've stuck with for every single iPhone to this day and that's the dedicated mute switch let me let me read to you the spec sheet of the original iPhone from 2007 now keep in mind when this came out it was not about specs that's not what people were impressed with about the iPhone but it had specs so this is just for reference for how far we've come it had a Samsung made CPU under clocked to 412 megahertz and you can see on the back it was an 8 gigabyte version but you could get 4 or later 8 or 16 gigs of storage and all versions had 128 megabytes of RAM and then you're looking at a hefty 1,400 milliamp hour battery oh and that's a 2 megapixel camera on the back no multiple lenses no flash no microphones just a simple camera no bump and opening up that camera app you can see just how simple it all started it's literally just a viewfinder and a shutter button like that's all you needed there's no tap to focus no tap to expose there's no portrait mode no Knight mode no video mode at all and no selfie mode either oh yeah that's right the first iPhone didn't have a selfie camera in fact no iPhones had selfie cameras until the iPhone 4 so as your trivia fun fact of the day and here's some photos I've taken on the iPhone 1 and you know on one hand I'm actually pretty impressed that they still look decent at all I mean I wouldn't post these but you know at least the colors are decent but on the other hand you can tell it's basically a webcam you know there's noise in every photo no matter how much light you give it and it's like splotchy noise exposure is impossible to nail focus is impossible to nail yeah it's bad but that's what makes it so incredible is that comparison with the iPhone we have today and the fact that this was one of the major stepping stones to the mobile photography that we kind of take for granted in our pockets this is the best Apple could make 12 years ago versus the best Apple could make today which has me really pumped about the best we're gonna have another decade from now and then performance well it would be almost unfair to review the performance now but it's actually pretty impressive that it still turns on boots up and works the battery life is about three hours since it's a decade-old small battery but for the most part you can see the software like it existed back in the day the last software update the original iPhone got from you know literally the first version of iOS was iOS 3.1.3 that you can see here and you can see how simple it is there's just slide to unlock no touch ID no face ID it's fairly responsive but you know no control center no notification shade all these things came later in fact believe it or not the first version of iOS didn't even have wallpapers that was eventually added as a feature plus some nifty default wallpapers were added that have slowly become iconic I also look at this voice memo app I can actually see how this is one of those things that really excited people in 2007 it's impressively smooth anyway I don't know about you but seeing the two of these phones side-by-side really sort of refreshes my appreciation for how good this mobile tech has gotten especially lately if you go back to the internet wayback machine archive you can see what Apple's website looked like on that fateful day in 2007 when this thing launched and they called it a breakthrough communications device and all that fun stuff my favorite part is if you click through to the high-tech section they talk about the crazy new sensors that they put in this phone including an accelerometer so it can tell when you're holding it portrait or landscape and rotate automatically and an ambient light sensor so it can raise or lower the brightness thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time and then of course this thing spawned odd touch first piece of tech I ever bought and the iPad and all the iPhones that came after it and the rest is history this thing in arguably changed tech design forever so anyway I hope you enjoyed this fun little look back I think this one will be amazing to do like a sort of a challenge like I don't know who else would do this maybe another youtuber but like trying to use just this phone for a week or something I don't know who would do that maybe tag someone if you have some ideas but yeah it's just sort of fun to actually turn it on use it and get some experience with iOS 3.1.3 also this is a perfect opportunity to give a little shout out or a shameless plug to retro tech which is coming back so a lot of you may remember earlier this year we did a pilot episode diving deep into the original Gameboy I'll leave a link below so now since then and I've tweeted this we finished shooting and editing six incredible episodes all of different iconic pieces of retro tech and so they're coming right at the beginning of December and I am really excited for you guys to see them I mean we spent a lot of time on them but there's also some amazing guests great segments they turned out great so either way thanks for watching this one and feel free to leave a comment what was your first smartphone if mine was the LG Voyager was yours the iPhone or was yours something else feel free to let me know I'll hang out in the comments and I'll catch you guys in the next one peacehey what's up guys I'm Kim PhD here this is the iPhone 11 pro and this is the iPhone fun fact I've never actually owned a first generation iPhone or a second gen or a 3rd gen the first iPhone I ever owned and reviewed was the iPhone 5s this video it's mainly for fun but it's also for people who make a habit of complaining that this year's phones are just last year's phones plus a few small bumps because if you haven't noticed that's kind of the whole point the whole reason they're coming out with phones over and over again year after year besides trying to make as much money as possible is to offer a small bump and a small improvement in year-over-year and then when you do feel like upgrading it adds up to a larger difference the three or four years after you've finally decided to upgrade these smartphones it's a mature market it's very rare that we get a truly revolutionary new device a revolutionary new smartphone but back in 2007 this was that so I wanted to take a quick look back at a retro phone that I never used the original the iPhone so first thing I'm noticing holding it now in 2019 is its a chunky one you know like this is a really thick phone but it's also really small it honestly feels about half the size of its much much much younger brother and you know generally it's the right shape the rectangle with rounded corners with a flat display these big chrome chamfers big forehead big chin we know that and a physical home button is there and it's kind of rare these days but every corner of this device is actually legitimately reachable that's no problem at all and the iconic two-tone metal and plastic it's super recognizable as this first iPhone you could probably tell as soon as you saw the thumbnail this is of course a used iPhone but it's held up pretty well for a decade plus in people's hands fun fact though we all know most modern smartphones or maybe we don't know but they're hiding their antenna back in the metal frame of the phone and various places you can see it around the phone this first iPhone didn't do that it just put them all down in the bottom half of the phone and made the bottom plastic so that the radios and antennas could go through that passes through plastic better than metal simple as that and then there's the display so while today we have all these huge high-resolution displays six to six and a half inches for a display isn't even blinked at anymore back here in 2007 we're looking at a 3.5 inch 320 by 480 LCD display can you see individual pixels yes yes you can see individual pixels it measures in at officially 163 PPI but it does get surprisingly bright so I'm not even mad at that as soon as you look at it a little bit off axis though or you know even turn it off you can see the huge difference versus the laminated super high-tech high refresh rate OLED panels we have today and that's not even getting into the whole folding phone thing but it's easy to forget the display when this phone first came out was I think the most revolutionary part of the hardware the fact that it was a glass display and it had ten finger multi-touch and that was a big leap for the mobile UI and I remember when this one came out it was on 18 T or singular only and I was a high school kid on Verizon so I couldn't just switch carriers to get it so I had my first smartphone was an iPhone competitor called the LG Voyager and I don't know if you remember that but it was also a touchscreen but it was a resistive touchscreen and it wasn't multi-touch and it was just a very very different experience not all touchscreens are created alike so this was a big deal I did still enjoy the Voyager though I did review it good times this is obviously a touchscreen phone on the front and a multimedia texting device on the inside the bottom of the original iPhone is maybe where it shows us age the most that is the og 30 pin connector and the speaker and microphone down here in those grills which means about the top is where you'll find the headphone jack but not just any headphone jack you can see closely here this is a recessed three-and-a-half millimeter headphone jack so if you had headphones with the right diameter then you were fine but if you had a thicker cable or if you had a certain right angle connector they wouldn't work and you'd have to get an extender basically a headphone jack two headphone jack dongle power button is up at the top volume rocker on the left it stayed this way for a while until they move the power button to the right for the first time in the iPhone 6 and then that's next to Loki one of the most significant Apple designs I think in their mobile history because something they've stuck with for every single iPhone to this day and that's the dedicated mute switch let me let me read to you the spec sheet of the original iPhone from 2007 now keep in mind when this came out it was not about specs that's not what people were impressed with about the iPhone but it had specs so this is just for reference for how far we've come it had a Samsung made CPU under clocked to 412 megahertz and you can see on the back it was an 8 gigabyte version but you could get 4 or later 8 or 16 gigs of storage and all versions had 128 megabytes of RAM and then you're looking at a hefty 1,400 milliamp hour battery oh and that's a 2 megapixel camera on the back no multiple lenses no flash no microphones just a simple camera no bump and opening up that camera app you can see just how simple it all started it's literally just a viewfinder and a shutter button like that's all you needed there's no tap to focus no tap to expose there's no portrait mode no Knight mode no video mode at all and no selfie mode either oh yeah that's right the first iPhone didn't have a selfie camera in fact no iPhones had selfie cameras until the iPhone 4 so as your trivia fun fact of the day and here's some photos I've taken on the iPhone 1 and you know on one hand I'm actually pretty impressed that they still look decent at all I mean I wouldn't post these but you know at least the colors are decent but on the other hand you can tell it's basically a webcam you know there's noise in every photo no matter how much light you give it and it's like splotchy noise exposure is impossible to nail focus is impossible to nail yeah it's bad but that's what makes it so incredible is that comparison with the iPhone we have today and the fact that this was one of the major stepping stones to the mobile photography that we kind of take for granted in our pockets this is the best Apple could make 12 years ago versus the best Apple could make today which has me really pumped about the best we're gonna have another decade from now and then performance well it would be almost unfair to review the performance now but it's actually pretty impressive that it still turns on boots up and works the battery life is about three hours since it's a decade-old small battery but for the most part you can see the software like it existed back in the day the last software update the original iPhone got from you know literally the first version of iOS was iOS 3.1.3 that you can see here and you can see how simple it is there's just slide to unlock no touch ID no face ID it's fairly responsive but you know no control center no notification shade all these things came later in fact believe it or not the first version of iOS didn't even have wallpapers that was eventually added as a feature plus some nifty default wallpapers were added that have slowly become iconic I also look at this voice memo app I can actually see how this is one of those things that really excited people in 2007 it's impressively smooth anyway I don't know about you but seeing the two of these phones side-by-side really sort of refreshes my appreciation for how good this mobile tech has gotten especially lately if you go back to the internet wayback machine archive you can see what Apple's website looked like on that fateful day in 2007 when this thing launched and they called it a breakthrough communications device and all that fun stuff my favorite part is if you click through to the high-tech section they talk about the crazy new sensors that they put in this phone including an accelerometer so it can tell when you're holding it portrait or landscape and rotate automatically and an ambient light sensor so it can raise or lower the brightness thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time and then of course this thing spawned odd touch first piece of tech I ever bought and the iPad and all the iPhones that came after it and the rest is history this thing in arguably changed tech design forever so anyway I hope you enjoyed this fun little look back I think this one will be amazing to do like a sort of a challenge like I don't know who else would do this maybe another youtuber but like trying to use just this phone for a week or something I don't know who would do that maybe tag someone if you have some ideas but yeah it's just sort of fun to actually turn it on use it and get some experience with iOS 3.1.3 also this is a perfect opportunity to give a little shout out or a shameless plug to retro tech which is coming back so a lot of you may remember earlier this year we did a pilot episode diving deep into the original Gameboy I'll leave a link below so now since then and I've tweeted this we finished shooting and editing six incredible episodes all of different iconic pieces of retro tech and so they're coming right at the beginning of December and I am really excited for you guys to see them I mean we spent a lot of time on them but there's also some amazing guests great segments they turned out great so either way thanks for watching this one and feel free to leave a comment what was your first smartphone if mine was the LG Voyager was yours the iPhone or was yours something else feel free to let me know I'll hang out in the comments and I'll catch you guys in the next one peace\n"