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Troubleshooting, watch steve jobs introduce the original iphone in 2007.

Ten years ago today, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs introduced iPhone to the world.

In a highly anticipated keynote presentation, Jobs famously announced what seemed like three different products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device… of course this was soon to be revealed as all contained within the same device; the iPhone. The rest, as they say, is history.

As iPhone turns ten years old, it’s worth watching the full MacWorld 2007 presentation of Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPhone to the world. If you’re feeling nostalgic or just want to see one of Jobs most legendary presentations, it has been embedded below for easy viewing:

Whether you’ve had an iPhone since the very beginning, or are a newcomer to the platform, it’s fun to look back a decade and see how the genuinely revolutionary product was unveiled and demoed. It’s not hyperbole to say the iPhone changed consumer electronics, cell phones and smartphones forever, completely changing the expectations of what a phone can do and what a phone should be.

(Image of Steve Jobs holding original iPhone via @pschiller on Twitter)

A month after the device debuted on stage, the very first iPhone commercial was aired on TV, which is a classic worth watching as well.

It certainly makes you wonder, where will iPhone be in another 10 years?

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Just stop worrying about all the gizmos you think you need and enjoy the ones you have. Just leave my Mac, my IPad and my IPhone alone, when something new from apple comes out if there something I feel I want or need I will think about it then. I still wish they had left IPhoto alone, I still use it I do not like photo at all. If it isn’t broke do not fix

Man, I agree 1000%. I feel like the company has been infiltrated by average people with share prices than in the quality it takes to make it great. Even the OS on both iPhone and Mac are getting slower, buggier and bloated and with fragmented feature sets leaves you trying to figure out if development is under one roof in Cupertino or like their manufacturing process and made everywhere. I like their products still more than most but in the end ecosystems will be built and competition will come along and they will become the Dell of the computer industry–trying to cheap it out and milk pro features with cool videos selling the product as a must-have. 7 phones in 10 years. Geezu, think about it. Make the model I have now the best and I may upgrade the next time around instead of moving on to something else where you change the features so I forget how to login to my phone and how the heck to add a song to a playlist in the Music app. Uggh. Steve wouldn’t have stood for the bullsh*t.

It’s because of people like you that cause Apple to continually change the OS, because its just not technically possible to dramatically change the hardware year on year.

Wrong on the number of iPhones in 10 years btw. 1st gen: June 29, 2007 3G: July 11, 2008 3GS: June 19, 2009 4: June 24, 2010 4S: October 14, 2011 5: September 21, 2012 5C, 5S: September 20, 2013 6 / 6 Plus: September 19, 2014 6S / 6S Plus: September 25, 2015 SE: March 31, 2016 7 / 7 Plus: September 16, 2016

Everyone wants the next revolutionary device, but nobody says what that is or should be. There’s only so much you can do to a damn phone unless you want it to make you fly.

Apple have to keep changing and adding features to the OS because people keep bleating about how they want or expect more.

FYI, neither iOS or macOS are bloated or fragmented. In fact they have never been so integrated across all platforms as they are now. If you want fragmentation, look at android, its a dogs breakfast of garbage along with the garbage hardware that it comes in. Anyone for an exploding samsung? Now thats true fragmentation for you.

I don’t share your concern about Apple 10 years from now.

I think it’s very important to remember that Apple, at the time the first iPhone was released, was a much smaller operation.

They were certainly on a growing track before iPhone and it was to continue in a huge way after this launch. The broke record after record after record after record.

I’mm nobody, but I have managed small to medium companies with annual revenues up to 60 million. I cannot for the life of me, imagine how hard it has to be – after the crazy intense growth they had to sustain for years, and at the overall scale they are at now – to be as attuned and attentive as they were back then on each and every product release, firmware release, and OS release.

That doesn’t make it ok, but I am not unhappy at all with any of my current Apple products. In fact, on Friday I added to one of the many memorable Apple moments in my life with the arrival of my AirPods.

As expected, and as with every Apple product I have purchased since 2004, I was surprised and delighted with everything about them. That is how you want every customer experience to be, no matter what you do.

As with most companies, answering to the stock market on a quarterly basis is a big problem for most publicly traded companies. It make you potentially take your eye off the ball.

Anyway, I’m pretty hopeful at least that this company will continue to delight customers like me long into the future.

I have an original iPhone and iPhone 3G, they are quite literally more responsive to touch and “faster” in the interface than modern iPhones. Sure the internet was slower, but the device is much faster. Why is that?

Steve Jobs was a perfectionist and Apple developed for him, the entire company perfected products for him. Now they seem to design by committee for who knows who, they don’t seem to know who their customer is anymore, but the company is certainly no longer perfecting products and there are compromises all over the place.

Back then we celebrated revolutionary new products and technologies, with amazing intuitive interfaces and amazing performance. Today we celebrate losing features like headphone jacks, worse performance, a clunky “redesigned” lockscreen that still doesn’t feel right and should never have been changed from the iconic slide-to-unlock, and iMessage stickers? Oh and new Emoji!

At this rate I am very concerned about where Apple will be in 10 years, it’s not heading in the right direction right now.

Very well put, and I couldn’t agree more.

Apple have nothing to do with emoji’s. Unicode is the body that oversees their upgrade, Apple just implement them to keep up with the standard.

As for the original iPhone, it was a revolutionary device, but it certainly wasn’t faster than any iPhone I have had since.

Living in the past doesn’t bring the future any faster.

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The iPhone at 15: Steve Jobs Revealed His Greatest Product in 2007

The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007 and it helped Apple grow into a $3 trillion company over the next 15 years.

• Patrick's play The Cowboy is included in the Best American Short Plays 2011-12 anthology. He co-wrote and starred in the short film Baden Krunk that won the Best Wisconsin Short Film award at the Milwaukee Short Film Festival.

On Jan. 9, 2007 at the MacWorld Expo, Steve Job unveiled the first iPhone.

Fifteen years ago today, the first iPhone went on sale. It was five months after Steve Jobs, in perhaps his most iconic Apple keynote,  introduced the original iPhone : "An iPod, a phone and internet communicator. An iPod, a phone, are you getting it?"

Steve Jobs revealed Apple's phone on Jan. 9, 2007. Night at the Museum was No. 1 in theaters. Nokia was the big name in phones. President Gerald Ford had been buried days earlier. And in a wildcard playoff game, the Indianapolis Colts had just defeated the Kansas City Chiefs before going on to win the Super Bowl. 

"iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," Jobs said during his keynote speech.

The iPhone wasn't actually magical. There were even  behind-the-scenes efforts required to keep the iPhone from crashing while Jobs demonstrated it during the keynote . But 15 years later, it would be hard to argue that the iPhone wasn't revolutionary. Whether you are a loyal iPhone owner or have never owned one, the impact the iPhone has made in our daily lives is indisputable.

Read: What it was like attending the very first iPhone event

Months after being announced, the iPhone arrived in stores on June 29, 2007.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the iPhone, here are 15 facts about the iPhone and Apple.

Apple is now worth $3 trillion dollars

In 2007, Apple's market capitalization (the total value of all the shares of Apple stock) was $174.03 billion. On Jan. 3, 2022, it hit $3 trillion dollars , the highest market capitalization for any company ever.

The first iPhone had an aluminum body

The original iPhone came with a silver brushed aluminum finish. The current  iPhone 13 has an aluminum frame, glass front and back, and comes in five colors. The iPhone 13 Pro is available in three finishes.

An iPhone for $499

The original iPhone cost $499 and came with 4GB of storage. For $100 more you could get one with 8GB of storage. The iPhone 13 Pro Max costs $1,099 for 256GB of storage and tops out at 1TB of storage for $1,599.

It predates Instagram, Uber, TikTok and more

The following companies didn't exist in 2007: Instagram, Uber, TikTok, Twitch, Snap, Lyft, DoorDash, Tinder, Slack, Lime, Postmates, Venmo and Pinterest.

It only had a single camera

The original iPhone had a single camera and it was located on the back. The iPhone 13 Pro has four cameras (three on the back and one on the front).

You couldn't copy and paste

You couldn't copy and paste text with the original iPhone. In fact, copy and paste wasn't added until 2009 with the release of iPhone OS 3.

The first iPhone had 15 apps.

There were only 15 apps to start

The original iPhone had 15 apps: Calendar, Camera, Clock, Contacts, iPod, Maps (Google Maps), Messages, Notes, Phone, Photos, Safari, Stocks, Voice Memos, Weather and Settings.

The first of 34 iPhone models

There have been 34 iPhone models, and  Apple currently sells eight .

You couldn't record video

You couldn't record videos with the original iPhone. Now the iPhone 13 Pro can record 4K 60fps video and can even record in  ProRes at 4K 30fps .

A future movie maker

The following movies were filmed with an iPhone: Unsane , Tangerine , Detour , High Flying Bird , Snow Steam Iron and Lady Gaga: Stupid Love (which is technically a music video).

You couldn't text photos

The original iPhone didn't support MMS for sending things like photos and videos via text messages. It was added as a part of iPhone OS 3 .

A 3.5-inch screen

The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen. The iPhone 13 Mini has a 5.4-inch screen, the iPhone 13 comes with a 6.1-inch screen and the 13 Pro Max has a giant 6.7-inch screen.

Blue bubbles came later

FaceTime was released in 2010 and iMessage in 2011.

The App Store came later

The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 with 500 apps. According to Apple's website , there are currently 1.8 million apps in the App Store.

A million iPhones sold every day and a half

On Sept. 10, 2007 (74 days after the launch of the original iPhone) Apple sold its millionth iPhone. In 2018, Apple sold 216.7 million iPhones which is roughly a million iPhones sold every 1.5 days. Apple stopped sharing the number of iPhones sold after 2018.

How the original iPhone stacks up to the iPhone 7 Plus

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Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 17 years ago today

Last updated 9 months ago

Steve Jobs with the original iPhone

Context is everything. On Sunday, January 7, 2007, Bill Gates gave the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Hammering home Microsoft's then buzz phrase 'Digital Decade,' he talked about how great hardware wasn't enough, that we needed connected experiences. "Where people are being productive, doing new creative things, where they're mobile... that is the key element that is missing."

He said that, "Vista and the PC continue to have the central role," though he also claimed that Windows Vista was "the highest quality release that we've ever done."

Two days later and around 400 miles away, Steve Jobs introduced the very device, the very experience that Gates said was missing. He introduced the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco. While Jobs didn't use the term 'post-PC era' then, that's what the iPhone created. This was truly the device for productive, creative people on the move, and as an extra bonus, it ran OS X — now called macOS — rather than Windows Vista.

Many more things

That 2007 keynote is justifiably famous for how well it introduced the iPhone. Jobs opened it by saying that, "We're going to make some history together today" and it is the phone he meant.

His presentation is an example of a really finely produced keynote, and it takes you through the world of cell phones as they were before showing you exactly where they were all going wrong. And then how the iPhone would of course fix all that.

Today the segment showing what phones used to look like is a historical curiosity. But at the time, that wasn't the past, it was the present and these archaic-seeming phones were the best available.

If you dislike Apple, if your personal preference means you buy Androids instead of iPhones, you're still benefiting from that keynote today. During the many times Apple would later go to court over the similarities between iPhone and Android, it would present a graphic demonstrating its position. This is the one it showed when up against Samsung.

Yet the presentation did feature other things, some of which were roundly applauded at the time and one other that we've only truly learned to appreciate in the years since.

Jobs opened the presentation by referring back to what he'd announced the previous year. That 2006 keynote had been when Apple not only announced it was moving from PowerPC to Intel processors, it vowed to complete the transition for all Mac models within 12 months. In 2007, he referred to this as being a "huge heart transplant" and that, "we did it in seven months."

He said that Apple's previous year had been remarkably successful and he also specified that over half of all new Mac buyers were now switching from Windows. It had recently been half of all buyers in Apple Stores, but now it was 50 percent wherever you could buy a Mac.

Next, he showed a quote from a 2004 internal memo at Microsoft where Jim Allchin of the company's Senior Leadership team said, "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."

Jobs revealed that Allchin was shortly to retire, so he's "alerted our Seattle stores to keep an eye out for him and give him really good service."

The rest of that Allchin memo, incidentally, included the statement that "Longhorn [codename for Vista] is a pig and I don't see any solution to this problem." Jobs didn't quote that, but he did run a new ad from the Get a Mac campaign specifically aimed at Vista.

"So 2007 is going to be a great year for the Mac," said Steve Jobs, "but this is all we're going to talk about the Mac today. We're going to move on to some other things."

Remember that back in the mid-2000s, there were more rumors about Apple introducing a phone than there are today about it making a car. Vastly more. So with these words, he was surely going to make the big announcement next.

Except he didn't. Instead, Jobs seemed to tease us by talking about Apple's music business. What appeared to be a diversion was just the first part of setting the stage for the day's real purpose.

But for now, Jobs revealed that they had just passed 2 billion song sales and that the iPod had become the world's most popular video player "by a large margin." He revealed that in the then first four months that movies had been available on iTunes, people had bought 1.3 million of them.

At the time, there were only 100 films on the service, but Jobs announced this would increase to 250 because Paramount was coming to iTunes.

Jobs managed to make 250 movies sound good — but there was one figure he didn't even try to put a gloss on. And that was sales of the Zune, Microsoft's iPod killer which had been released the previous November. Only figures for that launch month were available, but they showed that after a big launch, the Zune had managed only 2 percent market share.

"No matter how you try to spin this, ah, what can you say?" said Jobs.

At last the iPhone

Finally, at 24 minutes into the presentation, Jobs paused. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years," he said. Later, at the end of the keynote and when it had gone so well, he also confessed on stage: "You know, I didn't sleep a wink last night, I was so excited about today."

It turned out that there were other reasons to not sleep a wink and Apple engineers knew them all. While it was only revealed very much later , Jobs's presentation was attended by iPhone engineers who knew how easily it could all have gone wrong. The software wasn't finished, the whole phone was still being worked on, and if Jobs deviated from the planned demo, it was likely that the phone would crash.

Instead, as you know, the whole presentation went flawlessly. Or rather, most of it did.

My clicker isn't working

Having successfully concluded the demo of the new iPhone, Jobs went on to talk about market share and clicked to move on to his next slide. And clicked. And clicked.

He explained that the clicker wasn't working and picked up a spare — which appeared to also not work. "They're scrambling backstage right now," he told the audience.

This segment is completely forgotten now, yet at a key moment on this most crucial presentation of his Apple career, it went wrong. You can only imagine how nervous it must've made Jobs.

But then you can also admire how he managed to fill for 55 seconds with a story about how Steve Wozniak had built a clicker-like device at college to mess with people's TV reception.

Aiming for 1 percent

Earlier, Jobs had made you think that the Zune's 2 percent market share was disastrous. When he got the slides working, he built up to saying that Apple was aiming for a 1 percent share of the cellphone market — and that this was great.

There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been around one billion phones. Apple was aiming for 10 million iPhones in the first year.

The iPhone didn't actually launch until June, but it then took only 74 days for the company to sell its first million of them.

Different company

It's just that the company was no longer Apple Computer, Inc. The very last thing Steve Jobs announced at this presentation 15 years ago was that the company was changing its name.

Standing in front of a side that showed the Mac, iPod, Apple TV , and iPhone, he pointed out that only the first of those is truly what you'd call a computer. "We've thought about this," he said, talking about how Apple was doing more than just computers, "and we thought maybe our name should reflect this a little bit more than it does."

From this day on, the company would now be known as just Apple, Inc — and it would truly never be the same again.

The iPhone was the first iOS device, a category that now includes the iPod touch, plus all the variations of the iPad.

In September 2018, Tim Cook announced that Apple was close to shipping its 2 billionth iOS device .

At the time, AppleInsider worked the numbers and calculated that the 2 billionth iPhone — specifically iPhone — would be sold in the middle of 2021. No one knew then about the impact of the coronavirus on all phone sales — but it was already true that sales had been declining worldwide.

Apple now doesn't report iPhone sales, and it has not announced crossing the 2 billion figure. However, in January 2021, Apple announced that there were then over 1 billion iPhones in current, active use.

That's not sold, not pre-ordered, but over 1 billion iPhones being used every day. And at the same time, Cook said there were 1.65 billion Apple devices in use worldwide.

The iPhone was an enormous gamble, and it has surely paid off enormously.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube , Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

74 Comments

and that the iPad was now the world's most popular video player "by a large margin". There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been worth a billion dollars. Apple was aiming for 10 million dollars in the first year. Apple's aims for iPhone sales now seem modest I think you mean IPod not iPad in the first reference and clearly the graphic say 1% = 10M Units NOT 10M dollars. 

This day is depressing in retrospect as Steve was proud of his new invention. It was the new iPod and they believed it would be the only one of it's kind and rightfully so. The 62% iPod marketshare should have easily translated to %70 iPhone marketshare. The fact the U.S. and tech companies allowed android to create patent-infringing knockoffs just to make a quick buck for carriers who doubted iPhone is sad. Then came the commercials attacking Apple which created the rabid iKnockoff Knights who shit on everything Apple worked hard for THEM to enjoy!

I don’t think the iPad was the leading video player at the time...

rkla said: and that the iPad was now the world's most popular video player "by a large margin". There was a bit of a difference though. Using the latest 2006 figures available, Jobs said that the cell market had been worth a billion dollars. Apple was aiming for 10 million dollars in the first year. Apple's aims for iPhone sales now seem modest I think you mean IPod not iPad in the first reference and clearly the graphic say 1% = 10M Units NOT 10M dollars. 

I noticed that too. It's confusing but not wrong. 10 million dollars is %1 of a billion. Although I think Jobs was talking about 10M units not $ as that was very little money for such a massive project.

This is quite easily the greatest consumer product I've owned. By far. And, I still can't believe the value that it created for my stock portfolio in the past 12 years, which, in turn, enabled me to do a lot of things that I otherwise could not have.

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How It All Started: A Brief History of the First iPhone

It’s been over a decade since the launch of the most iconic smartphone that changed the world and transformed all our lives. As the latest iPhone 12 series takes the world by storm, it’s interesting to go back in time and unpack the very first iPhone and its history. Let’s rediscover what it had to offer and how it kicked off a technology revolution.

Transforming the World with Touch

In 2003, Apple was working on new input methods for the Mac with the aim of getting rid of the mouse and keyboard. This led to experiments with multitouch, and one of the first prototypes of a finger-controlled tablet was the Model 035. It was a large tablet that looked like a chunky version of an iPad. However, at the same time, mobile phones were just beginning to gain popularity, and Apple made a move that would revolutionize the industry forever.

The iPhone was the debut of the touchscreen, which would soon become standard in the world of smartphones. Sure, there had been smartphones available from established manufacturers before, but they had physical keyboards and a much smaller screen. This was one of the main aspects in which the iPhone changed the game. It boasted capacitive touch technology that Apple acquired from a small company known as Fingerworks that had invented it.

The Masterminds

One of the people credited with innovating Apple’s greatest product is Jony Ive. Back then, his team was working on some tablet prototypes. At the same time, other people at the company were focused on the iPod. It was becoming clear that the iPod would soon merge into a cellphone so that people could carry one device that would fulfill both their communication and music needs.

That’s why, in 2005, Apple collaborated with Motorola to release the Rokr E1, which was an iTunes phone that could play music bought from the iTunes Music Store. However, it could store just one hundred songs, had a terrible interface, and took too long to transfer songs from a computer. Needless to say, Steve Jobs hated it.

This led to the idea to merge the phone and tablet projects. Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Jon Rubenstein, and Phil Schiller met with Jony Ive to see a demo of the 035 prototype. They were impressed but also doubtful that the technology would work for a cell phone.

A crucial development came in the form of a small test app that used only part of the 035 tablet’s screen. You could scroll on it using a finger.

This led to the decision to develop two phones in parallel. This secret phone project was given the code name “Purple,” or just “P.” Within this, the project based on the iPod nano was called the P1, and the other one based on the 035 tablet was codenamed P2. It was an all-new multitouch device that represented a considerable risk on the company’s part because Apple had no experience with smartphone development. They were a successful computer and music company then, and if Project Purple had gone wrong, it could have destroyed the company’s credibility and reputation.

The P1 project was led by Fadell, and his team focused on further developing the iPod into a phone. After six months, they produced a working prototype that could make and receive calls using a rotary dial pad on the screen. However, it was a pain to use and had too many limitations, such as it couldn’t surf the net or run apps.

After six months of work on the iPod-plus-phone P1, the project was shelved by Steve Jobs, who thought it was better to focus on P2. However, Fadell was skeptical of touch screens, particularly because devices like Palm Pilots were awkward to use.

From Prototype to Phone

After the decision to go ahead with the P2, Jony spearheaded the industrial design, Fadell led engineering, and Forstall, previously looking after Mac OS X, was put in charge of adapting the computer operating system into one for the phone.

Jony’s design team worked on the iPhone without even seeing the operating system. They first worked with a blank screen and later had just a picture of the interface with mock icons. Similarly, the software team never got to see the prototype hardware.

In fall 2004, Jony’s design team began work on two styles of what would become the iPhone. One prototype was called “Extrudo,” and was led by Chris Stringer. It resembled the iPod mini and was made from a flattened tube of extruded aluminum that could be anodized in different colors.

The other design was named “Sandwich,” and was led by Richard Howarth. It was primarily made of plastic and was rectangular with evenly rounded corners. It had a metal band around the midpoint of its body, a centered display on the front, a menu button below the screen, and a speaker slot above the screen.

Jony’s team preferred the Extrudo, but it ran into several problems and was eventually shelved. So Apple began moving forward with the Sandwich prototype.

However, by 2006, this too was discarded due to design issues, and the team then turned to an old model they’d made earlier but had discarded in favor of Sandwich and Extrudo. This discarded model looked very similar to the iPhone that the world would eventually see. It had an edge-to-edge screen and a single Home button. A gently curved back snapped seamlessly onto the screen. It looked minimalist and elegant while also being functional. Of course, several developments were made before it was ready to be unveiled to the world in June 2007.

Exploring the Specs

The original iPhone was based on the P2 device of the Project Experience Purple (PEP) team at Apple. It was-named M68 and had a 3.5-inch LCD screen at 320×480 with 163 pixels per inch. It also boasted 802.11b.g Wi-Fi, a quad-band 2G EDGE data radio, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, and a paltry 2-megapixel camera.

These specs might fade in comparison to today’s context, but back then, in 2007, it was still revolutionary and kicked off Apple’s trend of giving the world incredible new phones.

Under the hood, it was powered by an ARM-based 1176JZ(F)-S processor and PowerVR MBX Lite 3D graphics chip, manufactured by Samsung.

The onboard RAM was just 128MB, and the battery was 1400 mAh battery. At launch, it offered two NAND Flash-based storage tiers – 4GB or 8GB.

It also included sensors like an accelerometer that could automatically rotate the screen to match device orientation, a proximity sensor that would automatically turn off the display when close to the face, such as when taking a call, and an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness for optimal viewing experience automatically.

Lastly, it could be charged and synced to iTunes using the 30-pin connector.

Before the official release, Steve Jobs accidentally scratched the iPhone screen with the keys in his pocket. This led to Apple teaming up with Corning, who had invented a new, chemically hardened material. This was turned into the Gorilla Glass on the first iPhone.

What about Software?

As for the software side of things, many tweaks happened pre-release. For instance, the split-screen mode for email got canceled after Steve Jobs thought it looked too crowded on the small screen.

Since the ‘i’ in iPhone alludes to the internet, the first model of this iconic device came with a relatively full version of Safari, Apple’s renowned browsing experience from Mac. The team also used Google’s location data to create a superb Maps implementation for the mobile device.

However, the first iPhone did not have any third-party apps and maxed out at just 16GB of flash memory. It was also exclusive to the AT&T carrier, which had a notoriously slow and unreliable EDGE GSM network.

The original iPhone was first shipped on June 28, 2007, and even then, spiraling queues formed outside Apple Stores, particularly the flagship ones such as the glass cube in New York City.

Despite the buzz and anticipation, Apple’s competitors were dismissing the hype as temporary. The media dubbed the device as the Jesus Phone!

The Phone that Defined and Defied History

Even though it was just a little over a decade ago, the world was still very different back in 2007. Bandwidth was quite limited and expensive. Moreover, smartphones only appealed to niche user groups and not the masses.

The original iPhone sold over 6 million units in its first year on four carriers in four countries. Today, hundreds of millions of iPhones are sold on almost every carrier in almost every country. Apple has diversified into a range of smart tech products and services such as the Apple Watch, Apple TV, CarPlay and AirPlay, AirPods, HomePod, etc.

The first iPhone’s successor was the iPhone 3G that boasted 3G functionality, apps, and more. It arrived a year after the first device, which was discontinued the same week. The first generation iPhone was eventually declared obsolete in June 2013, before the launch of the iPhone 5 and 5S.

In 2013, a prototype of the first-generation iPhone sold for $1500 on eBay! After all, it’s now a relic of what technology is capable of achieving. Perhaps nobody could have predicted how the iPhone has evolved over the past thirteen years, but Apple and Steve Jobs made a bold move with that first device. The rest, of course, is history.

You may like to read:

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Steve Jobs Originally Envisioned the iPhone as Mostly a Phone

By: Dave Roos

Updated: May 17, 2024 | Original: September 12, 2018

As Apple's iPhones and other smartphones feature increasingly sophisticated cameras, processors and touch screens, the rise of the super-stocked device shows that even the inimitable Steve Jobs couldn’t predict the future.

The popular mythology around Jobs was that he was always thinking 10 years ahead of the rest of the computing and electronics world. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple produced some of the most revolutionary and iconic pieces of consumer technology ever: the Apple IIc, the original Macintosh, the iMac G4, the iPod, the iPhone and iPad.

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But the origin story of the first iPhone reveals that Jobs, while undeniably brilliant, was not a technological soothsayer who predicted our digital future. He was just trying to make a really cool phone.

Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone , says that for all of the original iPhone’s game-changing innovations—the multitouch screen, the high-quality camera, the built-in accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors—Jobs conceived of the device as a cellphone, first and foremost.

And central to the concept of a cellphone back in 2005 and 2006 when the iPhone was being developed, was that it fit comfortably in your hand and in your pocket. “If the iPhone was uncomfortable to hold, that would have been a non-starter for Jobs,” says Merchant.

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If you watch the 2007 Apple keynote when the iPhone debuted, the first thing Jobs says when he unveils the device is that “It fits beautifully in the palm of your hand.” Its size was perfectly suited for what Jobs believed was the original iPhone’s crowning achievement, making phone calls.

“We want to reinvent the phone,” said Jobs at the 2007 keynote. “What’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls. It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones.”

Merchant says that Jobs’ number one pet peeve, according to developers who worked on the original iPhone, was that his regular cellphone would drop calls. No doubt Jobs was jazzed about the iPhone’s groundbreaking touchscreen and Apple’s first-ever apps for music, photos, and SMS texting, but none of that could get in the way of making phone calls. The first iPhone shipped without the App Store, in fact, because Jobs didn’t trust third-party developers to prevent dropped calls.

“Which is insane to think now,” says Merchant. “Because the iPhone became famous for being kind of a crappy phone. The phone was the last thing anybody used it for.”

The iPhone took two-and-a-half years to develop and wasn’t even Jobs’ brainchild. In 2001, Apple released the iPod, a sleek, handheld digital music player that sold millions and catapulted Apple into the device market. Apple executives worried that the iPod would lose market share once cellphone manufacturers figured out how to put MP3 players on their phones. But not if Apple beat them to it.

The first prototype of an Apple phone shows just how stuck Jobs and his team were in existing technologies. According to Tony Fadell, one of the original designers of the iPod and the first three iPhones, the first concept was literally an “iPod phone.”

“It was an iPod with a phone module inside it,” Fadell told Venturebeat . “It looked like an iPod, but it had a phone, and you would select numbers through the same interface and so on. But if you wanted to dial a number it was like using a rotary dial. It sucked."

Jobs scrapped the design and started from scratch. At the time, there was a team of Apple engineers who had been playing with a device called the Fingerworks iGesture Pad invented by a man with hand injuries who couldn’t use a conventional mouse. Members of the team had worked on the Newton, Apple’s infamous flop of a PDA, but still believed touchscreens held promise.

“It was more of a ‘blue sky, future of computing’ kind of thing,” says Merchant. “The touchscreen research had gone through several iterations. It was briefly tied to a tablet, put aside, and had just kind of sat in the dark. Then Steve Jobs showed up and said, maybe this is the phone. Out of that mutation was how the iPhone was born inside Apple.”

With the touchscreen technology in place, Merchant says that many of the designers and engineers on the iPhone development team absolutely saw it as an opportunity to build an entirely new kind of mobile computer, exactly what the iPhone would become for its millions of loyal users.

“Steve Jobs didn’t,” says Merchant. “He thought it was cool, but the evidence suggests that Steve Jobs wanted to use Apple’s technology to build the best phone possible. And a phone fits in your hand.”

Subsequent generations of the iPhone stuck to the small design, incrementally increasing screen size, but nothing beyond 4 inches. Samsung was the first to release a truly huge phone in 2011. The Samsung Galaxy Note featured an almost comically huge (at the time) 5.3-inch screen and single-handedly popularized the term “phablet,” a cross between a phone and a tablet.

Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer that same year. Whether or not it had anything to do with his absence, Apple released the iPhone 5 in 2012 with a noticeably larger 4-inch screen. Its first bona fide phablet was the iPhone 6 Plus, though, a 5.5-inch version released in 2014.

Simply put, the move toward larger screen sizes across the smartphone industry reflects the way that consumers are using their mobile devices. Jobs may not have imagined back in 2005 how the humble cellphone would become the primary platform for thousands of apps offering streaming music and video, real-time video chat, addictive video games and virtual and augmented reality experiences.

“The iPhone was designed to be a super slick phone in Steve Jobs’ mind,” says Merchant. “It was his development team and the demands of the user base that saw the potential in the new platform, that transformed the iPhone from a ‘slick phone’ into the culturally dominant, world-eating phenomenon that it is today.”

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Every iPhone release in chronological order: 2007-2024

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld and announced Apple’s next big product: the iPhone . Sales of the iPhone began on June 29, 2007, and it completely changed the world of mobile phones.

Now, in 2024, we’ve had over 17 years of iPhone releases. In just a few more years, it will be two decades of the iPhone, which is a little crazy to think about.

Let’s take a look back at every iPhone release in order, what made them special, and how we got to where we are today with the iPhone 16.

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Every iPhone release in order

Iphone (june 2007).

The original iPhone was the one that started it all and changed the mobile industry as we know it. Jobs said that the iPhone was three products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. All in a single device. Do you get it?

At the time, the iPhone only had a 3.5-inch display, a 2-megapixel camera, and maxed-out storage of 16GB with only 128MB of RAM. You couldn’t copy and paste text, there was no MMS support, and you only had web apps, not native third-party apps. Plus, the iPhone was exclusive to AT&T (formerly Cingular) at this time, so if you wanted an iPhone, it had to be with only that carrier.

The original iPhone is lacking by today’s standards, but back then, it was revolutionary. Most other cell phones still had physical keyboards and keypads. Touchscreens were nowhere near as popular back in the day. Some tech CEOs, such as Steve Balmer, mocked Apple for creating the iPhone and didn’t think it would succeed. Well, the joke’s on them.

iPhone 3G (July 2008)

In July 2008, Apple followed up the original iPhone with the iPhone 3G. Similar to its predecessor, it had a 3.5-inch display, 2MP camera, 128MB of RAM, and up to 16GB of storage.

But as the name suggests, this version of the iPhone added 3G connectivity (the original iPhone only supported Edge speeds) and introduced the App Store, where users could download native apps from third-party developers.

Though these were pretty iterative additions by today’s standards, the launch of the App Store was actually huge. This began the whole “there’s an app for that” era and changed how all of us use our iPhones.

iPhone 3GS (June 2009)

When Apple introduced the App Store in 2008, it changed how people use their iPhones. The old maximum storage of 16GB just wasn’t going to cut it anymore, so Apple increased the specs on the iPhone 3GS, which came out in June 2009.

The iPhone 3GS increased the storage to 32GB, and the RAM went up to 256MB. This doubled the storage and RAM of the original iPhone and even the iPhone 3G to make room for all of the cool apps you could now download from the App Store.

Not only did the iPhone 3GS get more internal storage and RAM, but it even improved the camera. Apple upgraded the camera to a 3MP autofocus camera, which resulted in better-looking photos than its predecessors. There was also a new built-in digital compass and even the introduction of new accessibility features like VoiceOver.

iPhone 4 (June 2010)

The iPhone 4 was a monumental step for the future of the iPhone. Though it retained the same 3.5-inch display as before, Apple upgraded the screen to a Retina display, which had a whopping 326 pixels per inch (ppi) density. At this high resolution, the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels on the screen. It was a drastic upgrade from the previous iterations of the iPhone and set the stage for Apple to add Retina displays to all of its other products eventually.

But that wasn’t the only major feature of the iPhone 4. Apple also added a front-facing camera for the first time, making it possible to have video calls on a mobile device. It also made selfies a thing. The rear camera got an improved 5MP lens with LED flash and became a gold standard for mobile photography.

This was also the first big hardware design change for the iPhone. While the first three versions were fairly rounded and made with plastic, the iPhone 4 moved to a new glass and stainless steel design with flat edges that we still see today.

However, the antenna design with the metal frame seemed to affect the signal when held in the left hand, leading to the first major iPhone scandal, dubbed “antennagate.” Jobs claimed users were “holding it wrong,” but eventually relented and offered free bumper cases for everyone to rectify the issue.

The iPhone 4 was also the first iPhone that became available on Verizon with its CDMA network, as it was no longer an AT&T exclusive.

iPhone 4S (October 2011)

While Apple had been releasing new iPhones in the summer season, things changed with the introduction of the iPhone 4S. This was the first iPhone that Apple announced and began selling in the fall, which is a trend that Apple continues to this day. Though the iPhone 4S launched in October 2011, Apple then moved to September launches for later iPhones, with a few exceptions.

The iPhone 4S took things a step further for mobile iPhone photographers by adding an 8MP camera that would set the standard for several more years. It also added 1080p video recording, which was a big milestone. And since the higher megapixel count and 1080p videos would mean bigger file sizes, Apple also bumped the maximum storage to 64GB.

The iPhone 4S was significant because this was the first iPhone with Apple’s digital assistant, Siri (that’s what the “S” stands for in “4S”). Users could ask Siri to perform various tasks just by using their voice.

The iPhone 4S also coincided with Apple’s launch of iCloud, which is Apple’s in-house cloud storage solution. It gives everyone 5GB of storage for free, which ironically, has not changed in over a decade, despite larger file sizes from photos and video, as well as cloud backups.

The iPhone 4S also launched on Sprint, further expanding the network choices for buyers.

iPhone 5 (September 2012)

Like the iPhone 4 before it, the iPhone 5 also introduced some major changes. With the iPhone 5, we got a larger, 4-inch screen, LTE connectivity, and an HD front-facing FaceTime camera.

This was also when Apple switched from the old 30-pin charging port to the Lightning connector, which became standard for iPhones for the next 10 years.

The iPhone 5 also introduced a new aluminum design that was incredibly lightweight and comfortable to hold. This design would end up being a favorite for many fans, including myself. However, the space gray version was prone to micro scratches due to the anodized finish on the aluminum.

iPhone 5S and 5C (September 2013)

With the iPhone 5S and 5C, Apple introduced two different iPhone models at once for the first time. The iPhone 5S would be the flagship and main star of the show, while the iPhone 5C was marketed as a more budget-friendly option that made some compromises to features.

The iPhone 5S was the first iPhone with Touch ID in the Home button, which added another layer of biometric security before one could access their device. It also improved the 8MP camera and included True Tone flash, along with new camera modes for burst photos and slo-mo.

The iPhone 5C was marketed as a more affordable, budget-friendly option, so it did make some compromises. Rather than have the aluminum body like its sibling, the body for the iPhone 5C was entirely made of plastic (it was “beautifully, unapologetically plastic,” as Apple designer Jony Ive put it), and it came in bright and bold colors for the first time ever.

Apple also released a case specifically for the iPhone 5C that featured hole cutouts that allowed the iPhone 5C color to peek through the case.

The iPhone 5C did not include the Touch ID sensor in the Home button. It only had the passcode method to unlock the phone.

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (September 2014)

This is when Apple began to introduce two different screen sizes for the iPhone. The iPhone 6 had a 4.7-inch display, while the iPhone 6 Plus had a larger 5.5-inch display. The overall design was thinner, with a unibody aluminum body.

However, the thinner body sparked another scandal called “bendgate.” This was because some people discovered that their iPhone 6 chassis would bend if enough pressure was applied, such as when it was kept in a tight back pocket of a pair of pants.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were also the first iPhones to add Apple Pay, a new contactless digital payment method that can be authenticated with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Storage was also increased to a max of 128GB.

iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (September 2015)

About a year later, Apple launched the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. These two phones retained the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays from its predecessor, as well as the overall look and design. But this would be the first time that it launched the Rose Gold color, which was a gorgeous metallic pink. It was a fan favorite for many people, myself included.

Apple also introduced 3D Touch with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. With 3D Touch, users could apply pressure on the iPhone display to bring up additional options, such as contextual menus on app icons on the home screen. It seems that 3D Touch was more of a hidden feature, however, as not everyone knew about it, and Apple eventually discontinued the feature years later with the iPhone 11.

Apple upgraded the cameras to 12MP for the first time, a bump up from the previous 8MP camera. The 12MP lens would be the standard until the iPhone 14 Pro launched in 2023.

The iPhone 6s series is also when Live Photos was introduced, which is a combination of a still image and a short video. When a person takes a Live Photo, it captures a couple of seconds before and after the moment the shutter button is pressed. A Live Photo looks like a still image, but when you activate it with a long press, it plays a few seconds of sound and motion.

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are also the first iPhones that allowed users to activate Siri at any time with the “Hey Siri” command instead of just when it was plugged into power.

iPhone SE (March 2016)

The first iPhone SE was an interesting product, and showed that Apple can make a budget-friendly option that doesn’t feel cheap, unlike the iPhone 5C. With the iPhone SE, it combined most of the features and capabilities of the current iPhone 6s lineup into the body of an iPhone 5.

The iPhone SE also defined the idea of the perfect compact iPhone for many people. The 4-inch display made it possible to use one-handed, and you got a 12MP camera, 4K video recording, Live Photos, and “Hey Siri” without needing to be plugged in. It was a great form factor that didn’t compromise on features aside from 3D Touch.

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (September 2016)

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus marked a big turning point for the iPhone. The launch of the iPhone 7 line meant the death of the headphone jack, but also saw the first generation of AirPods debut alongside it.

But that wasn’t all. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus introduced a sleeker design than the iPhone 6s, getting rid of those unsightly antenna strips on the rear. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus also became the first iPhones with an IP67 water-resistance rating for better durability. Apple also introduced the beautiful and shiny Jet Black color option, which would never be seen again after the iPhone 7.

However, the star of the lineup was the iPhone 7 Plus, as it was the first iPhone to have a dual camera setup with a main camera and a telephoto lens. And thanks to the dual lens, Apple introduced Portrait mode. To keep up with the camera improvements, maximum storage was also increased to 256GB.

Again, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were a turning point for mobile photography by adding Portrait mode. This lets people take professional-looking portraits that replicate what you get when using a DSLR camera, but now you could do it with your iPhone. After this, Portrait mode became incredibly popular and standard on every smartphone.

iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (September 2017)

The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus were interesting devices, as they signaled the end of the Home button era for mainline iPhones. Apple brought a new glass and aluminum design, though the form factor was similar to its predecessor. This new body allowed for wireless charging for the very first time on an iPhone.

One of the bigger features that the iPhone 8 added was Portrait Lighting. This lets users change the lighting style for Portrait mode images, making them look even more professional. The iPhone 8 was also the first iPhone to support augmented reality (AR) in apps and games, which brought a whole new experience to mobile.

The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus also launched around the same time as the iPhone X, which ushered in a new era for the iPhone. However, the iPhone 8 body has been recycled for future iPhone SE models.

iPhone X (November 2017)

To signify a decade of iPhone, the iPhone X was a special edition to celebrate the occasion.

It also introduced the next era of the iPhone by removing the Home button and Touch ID sensor in favor of a new biometric form of security called Face ID. Rather than use your fingerprint to unlock your phone, all it needs to do is scan your face.

Since Apple removed the Home button, that meant the iPhone X was the first iPhone to have a 5.8-inch full-screen design, and it introduced the notch that people either loved or hated for years to come. This is also the first iPhone with an OLED Super Retina display.

The iPhone X was definitely a milestone in the history of the iPhone. For a decade, we’d been used to an iPhone with a Home button, but the iPhone X completely changed that and established a new iconic look. And we barely have Touch ID anymore except on a few select devices these days.

iPhone XS and XS Max (September 2018)

With the iPhone XS and XS Max, Apple finally eliminated the Home button from the flagship devices. Apple also brought back a larger form factor with the Max moniker, and introduced a 6.5-inch display, making the iPhone XS Max the largest iPhone yet at the time. The regular iPhone XS still retained the 5.8-inch display from its predecessor.

Other improvements with the iPhone XS and XS Max were faster Face ID, better water resistance with an IP68 rating, and dual SIM support for the first time, as it added support for eSIM alongside the physical nano SIM card slot. The iPhone XS and XS Max also could handle Gigabit LTE for even faster download speeds. And the maximum storage tier went up to 512GB.

The iPhone XS and XS Max are significant as they set the new precedent for two sizes of full-screen iPhones going forward. The XS Max is also the first “Max” iPhone.

iPhone XR (October 2018)

The iPhone XR was a one-off that launched with the iPhone XS and XS Max. It was designed to be a cheaper version of the XS and XS Max.

Despite the iPhone XR having a larger screen than the iPhone XS at 6.1 inches, it was only a Liquid Retina LCD display rather than OLED like the flagship models. It also only had a single rear camera, as well as a slightly lower IP67 water-resistance rating compared to the IP68 on the XS and XS Max. The iPhone XR also came in six vibrant colors, and the cheaper price point appealed to people who were on a tighter budget.

The iPhone XR didn’t do anything groundbreaking, but it was the first iPhone that had the 6.1-inch display size that has become the norm for the iPhone in the past few years. And while it wasn’t a major flagship phone, the budget-friendly price point helped boost it to be one of the most popular smartphones in 2019.

iPhone 11 series (September 2019)

The iPhone 11 series included the iPhone 11 , iPhone 11 Pro , and iPhone 11 Pro Max . This is the first time that Apple has introduced three iPhone models together at the same time ( the iPhone 8/X and iPhone XS/XR were a month apart), and it set the new standard of  a standard iPhone, a Pro model, and a larger Pro Max.

This is also the first time that Apple included an ultrawide lens on all models, as well as the new U1 chip with ultra-wideband technology.

Furthermore, the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max were the first to have triple camera setups with a main, ultrawide, and telephoto lens. Apple also upgraded the displays to Super Retina XDR OLED displays and improved battery life.

The iPhone 11 Pro models set the stage for the next several years of iPhones to come. Though the cameras have continued to get larger over the years, even current iPhones still have that same triple-lens camera layout that debuted with the iPhone 11 Pro.

iPhone SE 2 (April 2020)

Apple surprised everyone in the middle of an iPhone life cycle by bringing back the iPhone SE, four years after the original, in the form of the iPhone SE 2. While it wasn’t as small and compact as the original, it still appealed to those who prefer small phones, and the hardware wasn’t too shabby either.

The iPhone SE 2 recycled the old chassis of the iPhone 8 while still using the A13 chip that was inside the iPhone 11 series. With the 4.7-inch screen, the iPhone SE 2 brought back the Home button and Touch ID for those who preferred it.

In 2020, the iPhone SE 2 provided an excellent value. It was the most affordable iPhone one could buy, and despite looking like the old iPhone 8, the iPhone SE 2 had more capabilities like Portrait mode with a single lens camera.

iPhone 12 series (October 2020)

The iPhone 12 series was the first time Apple introduced four iPhones at the same time with three different sizes: the iPhone 12 mini , iPhone 12 , iPhone 12 Pro , and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 12 mini, in particular, was unique because it was the smallest and most compact iPhone that Apple offered — offering a 5.4-inch display that still had the full-screen design of the rest of the iPhone 12 lineup.

Apple equipped the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 with dual rear cameras, but once again offered a triple camera system for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Apple also debuted Ceramic Shield, which is a coating on the front glass to make it more shatter-resistant. The Pro models also added lidar for better augmented reality experiences.

The entire iPhone 12 lineup was a big deal, however. These were the first iPhones to have 5G support, and introduced Apple’s proprietary MagSafe magnetic wireless charging and accessory ecosystem. With 2G/EDGE networks already put to pasture by most carriers and 3G soon to followit into obscurity, having 5G support was crucial, as it coexists with 4G/LTE and will be around for a long time. MagSafe also opened up a whole new world of creative accessories and is also a major influence on the new Qi2 wireless charging standard .

But the iPhone 12 series also removed the in-box charger. Apple began only providing the charging cable, so people would have to either use their previous charger or buy a new one. Other brands mostly followed suit.

iPhone 13 series (September 2021)

For the most part, the iPhone 13 line was very similar to the iPhone 12 before it. We got four models: the iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 , iPhone 13 Pro , and iPhone 13 Pro Max. The biggest differences were the new colors and a smaller notch.

But the iPhone 13 lineup did bring some other notable changes, including the A15 Bionic chip that gave a big boost to overall battery life. Cinematic video mode also launched with the iPhone 13 line, giving videos a depth effect that changed focus automatically, depending on what was going on in the scene.

The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max were also the first iPhones to get the 120Hz ProMotion display, which set the standard for future Pro models to come. With the higher adaptive refresh rate, scrolling and animations are smoother than ever. Though it’s not as drastic of a change as when Apple introduced the Retina display on the iPhone 4, it is still noticeable when you compare the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro side by side.

The iPhone 13 Pro was also the first iPhone to go up to 1TB in storage capacity.

iPhone SE 3 (March 2022)

Apple delivered an iPhone SE 3 in 2022, but it was less impressive than when the second generation of the device launched. It still had the iPhone 8 body with a 4.7-inch display and the Home button with Touch ID.

However, this time around, Apple stuffed it with the A15 Bionic chip, which was the same as the iPhone 13 line. It also added 5G connectivity support, which means it should be future-proof for a good while. Battery life was also a bit better than before.

Otherwise, not much else changed. It’s unclear if there will be an iPhone SE 4, but we hope to see an updated design — the iPhone 8 body is very outdated these days.

iPhone 14 Series (September 2022)

Though the iPhone 14 series continued the tradition of four iPhone models, Apple eliminated the mini from the lineup and replaced it with the new Plus offering, which is the same size as the Pro Max. The reasoning for getting rid of the mini was due to poor sales performance, and Apple believed more people would be interested in a Plus model over a mini.

For the most part, the standard iPhone 14  and iPhone 14 Plus brought over features from the iPhone 13, including the A15 Bionic. But the biggest upgrades came in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max with the Dynamic Island, which replaced the notch that debuted with the iPhone X, and a bump to the cameras to 48MP from 12MP. This was also the first iPhone with an always-on display.

The entire iPhone 14 line also got the new Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via Satellite features aimed at saving lives. The iPhone 14 series is also the first iPhone in the U.S. to eliminate physical SIM card trays and switch exclusively to eSIM.

While the standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus were iterative upgrades, the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max would play a major part in influencing the future direction of the iPhone. The Dynamic Island would eventually make its way to all iPhone models, getting rid of the ugly notch, and the 48MP would become the new baseline.

iPhone 15 Series (September 2023)

The iPhone 15 line has brought some of the biggest changes in the history of the iPhone yet. The base model iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus both get a big camera boost to 48MP, like the iPhone 14 Pro did last year, and they dumped the notch for the Dynamic Island.

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max got even bigger upgrades with the new titanium frame instead of stainless steel, the A17 Pro chip, and the new 5x telephoto lens on the Pro Max. Apple also got rid of the classic silent/ring toggle and replaced it with a new Action button, similar to that found on the Apple Watch Ultra, which users can map to different functions as they see fit.

But the biggest change, and the one that the entire iPhone 15 lineup will probably be remembered for, is the fact that it replaced the proprietary Lightning charging port with USB-C. Lightning had been around since the iPhone 5 in 2012, so the cable that everyone had been using for the past decade was finally dead.

Apple dropping its own proprietary charger, which it made a lot of money from licensing out, for a more universal option is a very big deal. Plus, it opened up a whole new world of USB-C accessories that were previously incompatible.

And there’s no doubt that the switch to titanium will have an impact on future iPhones and even the competition. Other brands have already begun to copy the titanium design, such as the OnePlus Open and even the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra .

iPhone 16 series (September 2024)

Following up on the iPhone 15, the iPhone 16  line takes it up another notch.

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus retain the same display sizes at 6.1 and 6.7 inches and 60Hz refresh rate. However, the brightness now goes up to 2,000 nits for peak brightness outdoors.

There is also a redesigned camera layout with a vertical pill-shaped module, which is like a hybrid between the one on the iPhone XS and iPhone 12. Apple also replaced the silent/ring toggle with the Action button that debuted on the iPhone 15 Pro. On the inside, Apple gave the base model iPhone 16 a nice performance boost with the A18 chip. And this time, Apple gave the iPhone 16 line some of the best color options we’ve seen in a long time.

The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max got slightly bigger this time, going with 6.3 and 6.9 inches for the displays. The smaller iPhone 16 Pro also has a better telephoto camera than its predecessor, which means it can do 5x optical zoom, making it on par with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The ultrawide lens also got a spec jump to 48MP to go along with the 48MP primary camera, but the telephoto remains the same at 12MP.

A new feature across the entire iPhone 16 lineup is the Camera Control . This is a physical button that can be pressed to launch the camera app and also act as a shutter button. It even features touch detection, so it can detect sliding gestures on it to adjust camera settings. Third-party developers can also make their app work with the Camera Control. With this new button, the iPhone 16 feels more like an actual camera than ever before — making it a big win for mobile photographers.

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• The iPhone 17 will reportedly get a new type of Wi-Fi chip
• Apple Intelligence features are finally available for everyone
• This iPhone 16 Pro accessory proves less is more
• The iPhone 17 Pro cameras could get a huge upgrade
• The iPhone SE might serve an unexpected surprise next year
• Apple iPhone

If you’ve bought an iPhone 16, you’ll know that there are hundreds of cases for the iPhone 16 series. Whether it’s the regular iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro, or even previous iPhones, an entire ecosystem is dedicated to building the best accessories for the iPhone 16.

Sure, you can buy something from Apple, and for many years, the company offered many cases in its stores. And it still has a range of items in a range of materials, except for one: leather.

Apple is once again prepping to overhaul the iPhone portfolio next year, and it seems a lot of interesting upgrades are on their way. The most notable among those is apparently the introduction of a new iPhone 17 "slim" model, which some rumors are also referring to as the “Air” trim.

So far, leaks have focused on the phone’s dramatic aesthetic makeover. Specifically, it could be the slimmest iPhone ever made. Moreover, it will make a stark departure from the current design language at Apple. And if the renders floating around social media are to be believed, an all-metal build is on the horizon.

Do you feel like your battery life has worsened since upgrading to iOS 18? If so, you aren't alone. Dozens of users are reporting excessive amounts of battery drain, specifically on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. But is there a fix? Unfortunately, not yet.

According to MacRumors, there's a long-running thread with hundreds of posts from users lamenting their battery's lack of joie de vivre. One user said their phone drops from 100% charge to 60% by midday, even though there was no heavy usage during that time. Another user reported a battery drain of around 1% every five minutes. Obviously, this isn't a great look for Apple.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Inside Apple's 6-Month Race to Make the First iPhone a Reality

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Six months before the first iPhone was released into the eager hands of the buying public, all Apple had was a glitzy demo of a product that, in reality, barely existed. There were still hundreds of problems—from tiny software bugs to seemingly insurmountable hardware hurdles—to be solved. Faced with a hard shipping deadline of June 29, Apple's employees scrambled as managers bickered and executives locked horns. This story of the 24 weeks, three days, and three hours leading up to the launch of the iPhone is excerpted from Fred Vogelstein's 2013 book, "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution." Buy it on Amazon .

Everyone agreed that Steve Jobs's iPhone demo back in January 2007 had been flawless—remarkable even. He'd taken a barely working iPhone prototype and, with some engineering sleight of hand, made millions want to buy one right away . But sleight of hand wouldn't cut it when the iPhone actually went on sale June 29. Consumers would expect it to work as flawlessly as Jobs made them look onstage. And the iPhone team knew they were going to need every hour between early January and that immovable on-sale date.

It may have looked like Jobs already had zillions of iPhones ready for sale. In truth, all Apple had was a few dozen dozen prototypes. And those prototypes were so fragile they couldn't withstand ordinary shipping from Apple's Asian factories, let alone daily use. They only made it to the iPhone January unveiling because an Apple executive had flown to Asia and flown back with them as carry-on luggage. "We had to figure out how to build iPhones in mass quantity," said Bob Borchers, Apple's then head of iPhone product marketing. Anyone can make one hundred of something. Making a million of them is something else altogether.

"How do you build and test antennas, for example?," he said. "Every unit that came off the production line would need to be tested and characterized because there is great variability in how antennas get built on an assembly line. That affects the radio performance." Apple was so obsessive about leaving nothing to chance that it actually designed and built its own testing setup at Apple headquarters to address these issues. "Then we brought Foxconn [Apple's Asian manufacturing partner] in and said, 'Replicate this five hundred times or whatever it takes to get it done.'"

It wasn't simply a matter of refining and producing parts that worked right. Key features of the iPhone were far from perfected. Its memory and the virtual keyboard, already one of its most controversial features, still didn't work right. Touching the letter "e"—the most frequently used letter in the alphabet—often caused other letters to pop up around the keyboard. Instead of appearing instantly after being "typed," letters would emerge after annoying lags.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had been among the many declaring the iPhone a failed product because it didn't have a physical keyboard. Apple executives were worried too. They weren't comfortable using the keyboard either. "Everyone was concerned about touching on something that doesn't have any physical feedback," one of the executives said. But Jobs was unyielding on the issue. "Steve's rationale was just what he said onstage. 'You put keys on, and now you've got these fixed keys that don't work for every app. Worse, you've lost half your screen real estate.' So everyone understood that this was incredibly important to get right—a make-or-break kind of thing."

Apple needed to reengineer the iPhone's display screen too. While Jobs had decreed it would be glass, not plastic, and had found a source for the material the previous fall, it was not as simple a matter as swapping one screen for the other. While Corning supplied the glass, that was only one of many steps necessary to create a working iPhone touchscreen. The multitouch sensors had to be embedded in the glass, not just attached to it, in order to work correctly. But the process of embedding the sensors in glass was entirely different from embedding them in plastic.

Glass is heavier than plastic too, so Apple's engineers needed a stronger adhesive to hold the assembly in place. They had to readjust how all the buttons would work on a phone now made with a stiffer material (glass doesn't bend like plastic). They had to rebalance the device to account for the difference in screen weight. "It was a really, really big deal," said an executive involved in the process. "I think Jeff Williams [Apple's then head of manufacturing] found every glass-cutting machine in China to make that happen."

Lastly, Apple had to invent its own call-testing protocols to get the phone accepted on AT&T's network. Manufacturers typically just let the carriers do this, but Apple wanted its own data in case of complaints about the iPhone's call quality. It imagined AT&T using its data to blame call problems on the iPhone when they were largely the network's fault. It wanted a way to refute that, Borchers said. "So we loaded [several] phones and computers into my VW Jetta and just went in loops and looked for call drops," said engineer Shuvo Chatterjee. The phones were programmed to autodial certain numbers at certain intervals, with the computers to measure the results.

Hundreds of attendees flock to the Apple booth at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, January 2007. Apple unveiled an eagerly-anticipated mobile phone with a touch-screen.

"Now Apple has a whole process, with special vans, but back then we were making it up as we went along in terms of what needed to be tested," Chatterjee said. "Sometimes it would be 'Scott [Forstall, the head of iPhone software,] had a call drop. Go figure out what's going on.' So we'd drive by his house and try to figure out if there was a dead zone. That happened with Steve too. There were a couple of times where we drove around their houses enough that we worried that neighbors would call the police."

Ultimately it fell to Borchers to coordinate and manage most of these issues. He and his team essentially were the iPhone project managers, helping Jobs coordinate and edit the work of the various teams, before developing its entire marketing plan. He and his team were all engineers themselves—Borchers had a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a master's degree from MIT—but their particular specialty was taking complicated engineering details and explaining them in laymen's terms.

If a feature could not easily be explained, Borchers's job was to ask why it was important to the project in the first place. "We helped decide the DNA of the product, nurtured that DNA through the development process, and then translated that into the message the product goes out with," he said. "So we got very involved with what features were going in and what it was going to look like."

Many customers associated Borchers with the first iPhone as much as they did Jobs because Borchers starred in the widely viewed instructional video. No one had ever seen a device like the iPhone before, and Apple wanted to make sure that new users would not feel flummoxed by a device with only one physical button besides On/Off, Volume Up/Down, and Silent/Ringer.

As part of the marketing run-up to launch, Borchers had planned to have Jobs tape a 30-minute video showing customers in detail how to use the iPhone. But at the last minute Jobs told Borchers to do it instead. "We had built a studio for Steve [on the first floor] in Building One so he could just drop down [from his fourth-floor office], do it, and go back to work. But I think he realized it was just going to be a ton of his time. So instead I spent a month doing takes and rehearsals in makeup and getting shaved twice a day and wearing one of Steve's mock black turtlenecks." Borchers is now the chief marketing officer at Dolby Laboratories. But when I visited him at Opus Capital, the VC firm he landed at after leaving Apple in 2009, he had the shirt in Plexiglas on the wall of his office. "There were no other shirts like them when I did the video," he told me. "So that's what the clothespins are for. They pinned them along the back so it fit me because I [at five feet eight] am smaller than Steve [who was six feet two]."

Borchers had ended up at Apple after three years at Nike, and then four years at Nokia, when it was the most dominant phone manufacturer in the world. He'd joined Apple in 2004 to help market the iPod to car companies such as BMW and develop accessories with companies such as his former employer Nike. When Apple decided to build the iPhone at the end of 2004, he was one of the first managers tapped to work on the project. He was well-known among senior executives partially because he'd interviewed for a higher-ranking Apple job in 2002, only to have Jobs decide at the last minute that he wanted an internal candidate. "I remember sitting in a conference room, having Steve walk in, look at my CV, and ask, 'Why are you even remotely qualified for this job?' Ten minutes in, he says, 'OK, I've heard what I need.' I thought, 'Well, OK. At least I got one brush with Steve.'"

That rejection turned into a blessing. Borchers came in a notch lower on the organizational chart a year later, earned Jobs's confidence over the following year, and became a natural to work on the iPhone because of his Nokia background. "So at the end of 2004 I became one of the first marketing employees for the iPhone."

Borchers's job gave him great insight into all aspects of the iPhone project. But at age forty-seven, it also gave him more responsibility than he'd ever had before in his life. He'd be a key player at every public presentation Apple would make for the iPhone. He'd help write many of Jobs's slides. And he'd have a say in every bit of advertising and PR associated with the device. It also meant that by the end of Macworld 2007, Borchers was more tired than he could ever have imagined.

Borchers had been one of the managers responsible for everything Apple did at Macworld, and when he wasn't spending twelve-plus hours a day at the convention center through the weekend, he was in his car driving the forty miles from San Francisco to his home in Pleasanton. He'd driven all two dozen of the demo iPhones up to the convention center in the trunk of his Acura the previous Thursday—bagged in plastic and sitting in two subdivided boxes one might use for liquor. He'd driven them all back the following Friday night. A car with a member of Apple's security team followed him up and back while he worried what would happen to his Apple career if he got pulled over or got into an accident. There were no other phones, so had his car gone into a ditch or caught fire, there would have been no iPhone to unveil. "I drove them into the basement of the Moscone Center and hand-carried them up to a special locked room we'd built where we had engineers waiting to unpack them and retest them for what felt like the sixty-fifth time that day."

In between these two incredibly tense drives, Borchers had been the conductor of how every iPhone looked and was displayed at Macworld. He'd been responsible for scheduling rehearsals, making sure the right people and equipment were always in place, and for making sure security was sufficient so that any pictures of the phone didn't leak out. He was so busy he didn't even get a chance to watch the keynote live. While Jobs was speaking, Borchers was installing iPhones in spinning Plexiglas display cases on the show floor, and making sure the demonstrators Apple had hired for the event had devices to demo.

Only the morning after returning home to Pleasanton did Borchers realize what a long six days it had been. He'd spent the night before the Tuesday keynote at a San Francisco hotel up the street from Moscone, but he'd forgotten to check out, and he'd left all his luggage in his room.

The first Apple iPhone seen January 2007.

Getting the iPhone ready for sale wasn't the only distraction Apple engineers had to contend with in early 2007. To get the iPhone built, Jobs had pitted two of his star executives against each other—Scott Forstall and Tony Fadell—to see who could come up with the best product. The fallout from that two-year fight was now rippling through the corporation. It had been an ugly war, full of accusations of sabotage and backstabbing, pitting friends against friends. It had left many people on both sides feeling that Apple no longer resembled the company they had joined. Instead of being the counterculture underdog, they worried it had been transformed into a soulless profit machine, a big company with IBM-style corporate politics.

There is no virtue in being a struggling company, as Apple was for so many years, and the dwindling resources of a company nearing bankruptcy—as Apple was when Jobs returned in 1997—created its own brand of snake-pit politics. But most at Apple in 2007 hadn't been there then. Apple may have been founded in 1976, but to most of its employees it was going through the growing pains of a ten-year-old company, not a thirty-year-old company. From 2002 to 2007 the number of employees at Apple had doubled to twenty thousand.

While some believe tensions with Forstall prompted Fadell to resign three years later, Fadell compellingly rejects this. He says he and his wife, who ran HR, left to be with their young children, despite Jobs's efforts to make them stay. They left millions of dollars in stocks behind. Either way, the iPhone took Apple's business to new heights. Apple became the most valuable company in the world because of their work.

But Forstall had been so aggressive in his effort to beat Fadell that it scared people. Many wondered whether there was anything he wouldn't do to get ahead. CEO Tim Cook would eventually push Forstall out of Apple in 2012. But back in 2007 it looked as if he were going to be there forever, and when he was put in charge of all iPhone software in 2007, a huge exodus of talent followed. Those who stayed got to watch Forstall's naked ambition on full display. Even his fans admit that before he left, he had become a cliché of a difficult boss—someone who takes credit for underlings' good work, but is swift to blame them for his own screw-ups. When Jobs was alive, Forstall drove colleagues mad with his sanctimonious "Steve wouldn't like that" critique, and he made no secret of his seeing himself as the eventual Apple CEO.

In 2011, Businessweek reported that chief designer Jony Ive and head of technology Bob Mansfield were so suspicious of Forstall they refused to meet with him unless CEO Tim Cook was present too. I've heard that was true for iTunes boss Eddy Cue as well.

It wasn't shocking to see Jobs play two executives off against each other; he was well-known for his Machiavellian side. But what was surprising was that Jobs let the fight go on so long and affect so many people at Apple.

"It was incredibly destructive," one executive said. "I think Steve would have been great during ancient Roman times, where you could watch people get thrown to the lions and be eaten. He played them [Fadell and Forstall] off each other. Tony was the golden boy for a while, then Forstall, then back to Tony, then back to Forstall. It became a circus. Remember "Spy vs. Spy" [a 1960s comic strip that pitted a white spy (the United States) against a black one (the Soviet Union)] in Mad magazine? It was like that—comical—if it hadn't wasted so much time."

Another executive, remarkably, made the same comparison. "The first time I saw [the movie] Gladiator [in 2007], I told my husband, 'This feels familiar,'" she said. (Forstall would not be interviewed for this project. Fadell is not shy about his feelings, though. After Apple pushed Forstall out, Fadell told the BBC, "Scott got what he deserved.")

In retrospect, many at Apple believe that it ultimately wasn't a fair fight. Fadell's expertise was hardware; Forstall's was software. That gave Forstall a built-in advantage because many believed that Jobs was much more interested in the software and industrial design of Apple products than the innards. But while the fight was going on, it wasn't at all clear how it was going to turn out.

Andy Grignon, a senior manager at Apple during the iPhone development, knows firsthand how nasty the fight between Forstall and Fadell was. He wound up in the middle and ended up feeling pulled in opposite directions like a piece of warm taffy. Even before work on the iPhone started, Grignon discovered simmering tension between the two executives. In 2004 Forstall tried to block Grignon from taking a job in Fadell's division. Grignon had worked for Forstall for three years building products called Dashboard and iChat. He thought they were decent work friends. They would go rock climbing together on the weekends. But when Fadell offered him a better opportunity inside Apple, Forstall went out of his way to block it. He told Grignon that he supported his decision to move. Then Forstall went behind Grignon's back to Jobs himself to stop it. "And he made enough noise to Steve that Steve actually intervened on my transfer to Tony's org. He sat Forstall [and some other executives] in a room and basically beat them all down saying, 'OK, you can have Andy and nobody else. Nobody else gets to transfer from software [under Forstall] to iPod [under Fadell].' That's when the animosity between them really started."

The fight was like a religious war. When work on the iPhone began, Forstall constructed an elaborate secret organization to work on the project. It was so secret that it wasn't clear for a while if Fadell even knew about it. From his office on the second floor of 2 Infinite Loop on Apple's campus, Forstall started pulling in some of the best engineers from around the company, creating lockdown areas all over the building as he went. "If you were working weekends, you'd see the construction crews come in all the time putting up walls, security doors ... everything ... so that by Monday there was a new lockdown area. I've never seen walls put up that fast. Looking back, it's almost comical to think about," said Shuvo Chatterjee. "As they reconfigured, some of us were moving almost once every two months. For a while, I just kept everything permanently in boxes because I knew if I unpacked, I'd have to pack up and move again right away." "It became a maze," engineer Nitin Ganatra said. "You'd open this door and the previous door would close behind you. It was Sarah Winchester-y in some ways."

Officially the iPhone was being run by Fadell. Fadell ran the iPod division, and it seemed natural to build the iPhone by starting with an iPod and just improving it. Forstall had a different and vastly more risky idea: figure out a way to shrink the software that ran on Macs and make it run on a phone. "We had all assumed the iPhone would run a version of the software we had designed for P1 [a version of the iPod OS designed for the first prototype]," said one of Fadell's iPhone engineers. "But totally in parallel, Forstall and his team were working on a version of OS X to run the phone. We didn't know."

Jobs wanted to run OS X on the iPhone. He just didn't think it could be done. When Forstall's team actually did it, Forstall won control of the iPhone project. "There is no hardware-software guy at Apple," said another iPhone engineer. "This has been a point of contention for a lot of people in the history of Apple. Hardware guys think they know software. And software guys think they know hardware. But Steve wouldn't have it [be drawn into that debate among his executives]. So when Scott said, 'Hey, Steve, there is this kick-ass software team in Tony's org, and I want it,' Steve is like, 'Well, of course. You're the software guy. They're doing software, they should be on your team.' By the time the iPhone went on sale in mid-2007, Forstall controlled many of its software engineers. And when Apple launched the iPod Touch a few months later, Forstall controlled that too.

People check out the new iPhone on display at MacWorld on January 10, 2007 in San Francisco, California. The device which is controlled by a touch screen will play music, surf the Internet and deliver voice mail and e-mail.

Fadell later went on to start Nest, a company that makes the first good-looking, powerful, and easy-to-use home thermostat. Not surprisingly, it has all the design and software flourishes of an Apple product. When it launched in 2011, it was one of the most talked about new ventures in Silicon Valley. And when Fadell and his partners sold Nest to Google in 2014 for $3.2 billion, it was one of the Valley's most talked about acquisitions

Fadell was truly Apple's first golden boy of Jobs's second stint at the company. At thirty-two he'd come to work at Apple only knowing that he was to work on some secret project he was told he was suited for. Four years later, as the line executive in charge of iPod, he was one of the most powerful people at Apple. By the fall of 2006, iPods represented 40 percent Apple's $19 billion in revenue. And its market share, at more than 70 percent, seemed unassailable. Apple was selling more Macs too, but those sales represented less than 10 percent of all personal computers. The iPod's success, meanwhile, had turned Jobs into a business icon once again.

Fadell had been exactly what Apple needed in 2001. He was young, brash, and smart, having been part of cutting-edge portable-hardware engineering in the Valley for fifteen years. He once told a reporter that he would have ended up in jail had he not discovered computers. He occasionally showed up for work with bleached hair. He was not good at holding his tongue when faced with sub-standard work or ideas. His first job out of college was at General Magic, a company Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld spun out of Apple in the early 1990s in the hope of developing some of the first software ever written exclusively for mobile devices. The project failed and Fadell found himself at Philips, the giant Dutch conglomerate, where he quickly became the company's youngest executive. He ran the company's new mobile-computing group, where he developed some early PDAs (the Velo and Nino), which sold decently. They also introduced him to the power of digital music on portable devices.

Fadell was getting ready to start his own company when Apple's then head of hardware, Jon Rubinstein, called, trying to recruit Fadell for a job that, astonishingly, he was not allowed to disclose. According to Steven Levy's book The Perfect Thing, Fadell took the call on a ski slope in Colorado in January and expressed interest on the spot. He had idolized Apple since he was twelve, according to Levy. That was when he'd spent the summer of '81 caddying to save up enough money to buy an Apple II. Weeks after Rubinstein's call, Fadell joined Apple, only discovering then that he was being hired as a consultant to help build the first iPod.

Grignon and others have said that Fadell's rise never sat well with Forstall. Up until Fadell joined Apple, Jobs's inner circle was composed of people he'd worked closely with at least from the beginning of his return in 1997, and in some cases from his days running NeXT, the computer company he'd founded after getting fired from Apple in 1985. Forstall had worked longer with Jobs than almost any other executive. He'd joined NeXT when he'd graduated from Stanford in 1992. Yet he wasn't part of Jobs's inner circle for a long time, and Fadell was. And Fadell, who was the same age as Forstall, was rising much faster in the corporation than Forstall. Fadell ran the iPod division, which generated 40 percent of Apple's revenue. Forstall was in charge of the application software that came with a Mac—things such as Address Book, Mail, Safari, and Photo Booth.

But then Forstall and Jobs bonded. It was in 2003–4, and colleagues believe it was because Forstall developed a severe stomach ailment around the time Jobs was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Jobs, who at first tried to treat his own cancer with diet, developed a regimen for Forstall that appeared to cure him. After that, said Grignon, Forstall began coming to more and more of Jobs's Monday senior-staff meetings. Ordinarily Forstall would not even have known about the iPhone project; he wasn't senior enough. "So as soon as he found out through those inner-circle discussions that Jobs wanted to build a phone, that's when he started to wedge himself in," Grignon said.

Forstall couldn't have been more different from Fadell. Forstall was smooth, engaging, and had Jobs's flair for the dramatic gesture, having acted in high school plays in addition studying to computer science. Even then, say classmates, it was clear how ambitious and determined he was. As Businessweek put it in 2011, "In many ways, Forstall is a mini-Steve. He's a hard-driving manager who obsesses over every detail. He has Jobs's knack for translating technical, feature-set jargon into plain English. He's known to have a taste for the Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, in silver, the same car Jobs drove, and even has a signature on-stage costume: black shoes, jeans, and a black zippered sweater."

For two years Forstall and Fadell fought about everything, often forcing Jobs to mediate disagreements over the smallest matters. Nitin Ganatra, who worked for Forstall and is now a consultant at Hornet Research, recalls one moment in 2006 when Jobs had to decide which group's boot loader would run on the iPhone. It sounds like engineering minutia, and it is. The boot loader is the first piece of software that runs on a computer. It tells the processor to look for and start the disk that has the machine's software on it. "We were like, 'Why does Steve have to come in and make a decision about something this small? Can't Scott and Tony figure it out on their own?'"

Another engineer, who reported to Fadell, expresses his frustration with the fight more bluntly: "For two years I worked Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's—insane hours—and it was hard to have to deal with this other political bullshit too."

Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs discusses the iPhone during his keynote address on the opening day of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, June 11, 2007. Developers and IT professionals from around the globe come together to connect with Apple engineers and get a firsthand look at the latest technologies.

Despite the feuding and relentless deadline pressure, the iPhone—remarkably—stayed on schedule for its June 29 launch. When it finally went on sale, the last Friday of the month, the event was covered by the global news media as if Elvis Presley or John Lennon had risen from the dead. News crews camped out at Apple stores across the country to witness the pandemonium as eager customers waited on line for hours. Steven Levy, who now runs Backchannel (a part of WIRED), wrote about his experience covering the event .

Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in the first two days they were available. In the next six months Apple sold another 3.4 million iPhones, driving many to conclude that it had changed the cellphone industry forever.

Looking back, the iPhone launch feels like an even more remarkable accomplishment than it did at the time. For all the iPhone's revolutionary design and features, a lot was wrong with it too. At $499 for the base model, it was too expensive. Virtually every other smartphone sold for closer to half that price. Consumers got the freedom to switch cell carriers or cancel their cell service anytime they wanted in return for paying so much more for the iPhone. Other, cheaper phones required customers to keep service up and running with one carrier for two years. But was that added flexibility worth $250 or more? Most thought it was not.

The iPhone ran on the slower 2G cell network when most high-end phones were running on the newer and much faster 3G network. The iPhone had taken so long to build that the chips enabling 3G reception weren't useable when the phone was designed. Most other phones had GPS. The iPhone did not. Most phones had removable batteries and expandable memories. The iPhone had neither.

The iPhone didn't run video made with Adobe's Flash technology, which at the time seemed to be every video but those on YouTube. YouTube used Flash to stream videos to desktop and laptop computers but a different technology that used less bandwidth to stream to mobile devices. Most companies didn't have the money or the technological prowess of Google to do likewise then.

Seemingly obvious features such as the ability to search your address book or to copy and paste text or to use the camera to record video were missing from the first iPhone too. Critics pointed out these flaws as if Apple had not thought of them. The problem was much more straightforward: Apple just hadn't had time to put them all in. "There were moments where we said, 'Well, this is really embarrassing,'" said Grignon. "But then we'd have to say, 'OK. It's going to be embarrassing. But we have to ship. Even though it is a stupid, small, easy thing to fix, we have to prioritize and fix only the things that are the worst."

There was no app store, or plans to launch one. The iTunes app store, which Apple didn't unveil until 2008, has been as important to the iPhone's success as the device itself. Last year it generated $20 billion in revenue for mobile-software developers and another $8 billion for Apple. It has been one of the engines driving Silicon Valley's boom. But Jobs, like the rest of Apple, was so focused on getting the device ready for sale that he didn't see the potential at first. "I remember asking Steve what he wanted to accomplish with the iPhone," Bob Borchers said. "He said he wanted to build a phone people could fall in love with. It wasn't 'Let's revolutionize XYZ.' It was 'Let's think about how to build something cool. If they fall in love with it, then we can figure out what they want to do with it.' When we launched the iPhone, we called it a revolutionary phone, the best iPod ever created, and an internet communications device. But we had no idea what an internet communications device even was."

Jobs understood why consumers would see the iPhone as a Macintosh for your pocket. It ran OS X after all. But he also hated the idea that consumers would see the iPhone this way. Computers are things that run software from developers all over the world—outside Apple. He didn't want the iPhone to become that at all. After the unveiling, when software developers began clamoring for permission to make programs for the iPhone, Jobs said no publicly and emphatically. "You don't want your phone to be like a PC," he told John Markoff of The New York Times right after the announcement. "The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers."

But the iPhone had so many other cool new features that consumers overlooked its flaws. It wasn't just that the iPhone had a new kind of touchscreen, or ran the most sophisticated software ever put in a phone, or had an internet browser that wasn't crippled, or had voicemail that could be listened to in any order, or ran Google Maps and YouTube, or was a music and movie player and a camera.

It's that it appeared to do all those things well and beautifully at the same time. Strangers would accost you in places and ask if they could touch it—as if you had just bought the most beautiful sports car in the world. Its touchscreen worked so well that devices long taken for granted as integral parts of the computing experience—the mouse, the trackpad, and the stylus—suddenly seemed like kluges. They seemed like bad substitutes for what we should have been able to do all along—point and click with our digits instead of a mechanical substitute. All of this captivated not just consumers but investors. A year after Jobs had unveiled the iPhone, Apple's stock price had doubled. Today it's nine times what it was back then.

Apple helped create the hype and then took full advantage of it. On launch day it sent top executives to various stores in big cities to witness it all and help whip up the crowds. Head of Global Marketing Phil Schiller went to Chicago. Jony Ive and his design crew went to San Francisco.

Steve Jobs's store was, naturally, the one in downtown Palo Alto at the corner of University Avenue and Kipling Street. It was a mile and a half from his house and he often showed up there unannounced when he was in town. The appropriate high-tech luminaries had already gathered when he arrived. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and early Apple employees Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld were already standing on line.

But it also seemed as if Jobs had some internal flames to fan of his own, said one of the engineers who was there along with Grignon and many others who had worked on the project, including Fadell and Forstall. "So there's this reunion of the original Mac guys, and it's really cool. And then Steve goes up to Tony [Fadell] and proceeds to go over in a corner of the store and talk to him for an hour and ignore Forstall just to fuck with him."

"Up until that day, for the previous six months, everything had been Tony's fault. Any hardware problems or ship delays or manufacturing problems—all Tony's fault. Scott could do no wrong. But that was the day the press reviews came out, and the iPhone's email [software] wasn't working for people, but everyone loved the hardware. So now Scott was the bad boy, and Tony was the golden boy. And it was funny, because Steve did it in a way in which his back was to Forstall so that Tony got to look at Scott while it was all happening. I'm not joking. The look on Scott's face was incredible. It was like his daddy told him he didn't love him anymore."

From Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution . Copyright ©2013 by Fred Vogelstein. Published with permission from Sarah Crichton Books.

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Today Marks 15 Years Since Steve Jobs Unveiled the Original iPhone

Today is January 9, which means it's been 15 years since Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, California and gave the world its first look at the iPhone , a device that would go on to change everything.

Smartphones at the time relied on limited display area, hardware-based keyboards, and styluses for screen interaction, but the ‌iPhone‌ stood apart because it a limited number of physical buttons and instead relied on a multi-touch display, which was more intimate and interactive.

Jobs described the ‌iPhone‌ as three revolutionary products in one: an iPod with touch controls, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone," Jobs famously said, and he couldn't have been more right.

No other smartphone maker has been able to match Apple's deep integration of hardware and software or its unparalleled chip designs, and that's why iPhones continue to be the smartphone of choice for a huge number of people worldwide.

Apple in January 2021 said that there were more than 1 billion active iPhones worldwide , which is a staggering number, and the success of the ‌iPhone‌ has driven Apple to become the world's first company to surpass a $3 trillion valuation .

Every year, Apple manages to make us excited about an iteration on a 15-year-old product. There are promising updates in store for the iPhone 14 , including the first notchless design that will see Apple adopting a hole-punch display that will provide more available screen space.

Apple is exploring the future beyond the ‌iPhone‌ as well, preparing for the day when the smartphone might be obsolete. The first AR/VR headset is could be unveiled in 2022, and while it will be bulky, expensive, and focused on VR experiences, we can expect Apple to iterate and improve on the headset experience until some kind of head-worn wearable becomes indispensable.

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The evolution of Apple’s iPhone

As the iphone ages, let's look at how the now-iconic device has matured since its arrival in 2007..

The iPhone has come a long way since its arrival in 2007. Here’s our look at every iPhone that Apple has released since the original iconic iPhone arrived in 2007. 

Every iPhone model from 2007 to 2023

The original iphone (2007), the iphone 3g (2008), the iphone 3gs (2009), the iphone 4 (2010), the iphone 4s (2011), the iphone 5 (2012), the iphone 5s and 5c (2013), the iphone 6 and 6 plus (2014), the iphone 6s and 6s plus (2015), the iphone 7 and 7 plus (2016), the iphone 8 and 8 plus (2017), the iphone x (2017), the iphone xr (2018), the iphone xs and xs max (2018), the iphone 11 (2019), the iphone 11 pro and pro max (2019), the iphone 12 and 12 mini (2020), the iphone 12 pro and pro max (2020), the iphone 13 and 13 mini (2021), the iphone 13 pro and pro max (2021), the iphone 14 and 14 plus (2022), the iphone 14 pro and pro max (2022), the iphone 15 and 15 plus (2023), the iphone 15 pro and pro max (2023), first iphone.

Apple’s first iPhone arrived in June 2007.

Apple / Foundry

After months of rumors and speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. The device, which didn’t actually go on sale until June, started at $499 for a 4GB model, $599 for the 8GB version (with a two-year contract). It offered a 3.5-in. screen, a 2-megapixel camera and won plaudits for the then-new multitouch features. Critics, however, said the phone was too expensive to do well in the market. (See iPhone launch story.)

Apple’s iPhone 3G arrived in July 2008

On June 9, 2008, a year after the original iPhone went on sale, Apple rolled out its successor, the iPhone 3G . The new model could connect to faster 3G-based networks, included built-in GPS, offered more storage and was cheaper. Selling for $199 for the 8GB model, $299 for the 16GB version, the iPhone 3G was available on July 11, and offered something called location services. “Location services is going to be a really big deal on the iPhone,” said CEO Steve Jobs. “It’s going to explode.” (See launch story.)

Apple’s iPhone 3Gs arrived in June 2009.

Again at WWDC, Apple’s Steve Jobs announced the next iPhone, a faster version called the iPhone 3GS . Although the form factor was unchanged from the previous version, the new iPhone was twice as fast as its predecessor and ran iPhone 3.0 (an early version of iOS 8, due out later this month). The 32GB iPhone 3G S sold for $299; a 16GB model went for $199. An 8GB iPhone 3G was also offered for $99. The iPhone 3GS was available June 19, 2009. (See launch story.)

Apple’s iPhone 4 arrived in June 2010.

The redesigned iPhone 4 arrived on June 7, 2010 in tandem with the newly-renamed iOS 4, and marked the arrival of FaceTime video chat. Prices remained unchanged: $199 for a 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB version. It went on sale on June 24, and heralded the arrival of the first high-resolution “Retina” screen. “Once you use a Retina Display, you can’t go back,” said Steve Jobs. (See launch story.)

Apple’s iPhone 4S arrived in October 2011.

In a change of pace, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S on Oct. 4, 2011, a few weeks after Steve Jobs stepped down because of health issues. New CEO Tim Cook talked up the new phone’s dual-core processor (the same used in the iPad 2), and said the 4S would go on sale Oct. 14. In addition to the usual 16GB and 32GB models, Apple also unveiled a 64GB version that sold for $399. (See launch story.)

Apple’s iPhone 5 arrived in September 2012.

The iPhone 5, the first version to have a 4-in. screen, arrived on Sept. 12, 2012, as CEO Tim Cook touted the faster, slimmer upgrade to the iPhone 4S during a 90-minute presentation in San Francisco. “This is the biggest thing to happen to iPhone since the [original] iPhone,” he said, referring to the first-gen smartphone Steve Jobs had launched in 2007. The iPhone 5 hit the streets on Sept. 21; prices for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models were unchanged. (See launch story.)

iPhone 5S and 5C

Apple’s iPhone 5s and 5c arrived in September 2013.

On Sept. 10, 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook rolled out not one, but two iPhones: the upscale iPhone 5S (now in gold, in addition to the usual white and black), and the colorful, less-expensive iPhone 5C. (The iPhone 5C was basically a reskinned iPhone 5.) The iPhone 5S got a faster, 64-bit A7 SoC (system on a chip), Touch ID, and a new motion data processor touted as the foundation for a new wave of health and fitness apps. The iPhone 5C started at $99 for a $16GB model; the iPhone 5S started at $199 for the same amount of storage. Both went on sale Sept. 20. (See launch story.)

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus arrived in September 2014.

For the second year in a row, Apple unveiled two iPhones in 2014: the iPhone 6 , which has a 4.7-in. screen, and the iPhone 6 Plus , with a 5.5-in. screen. Both iPhones sported new A8 processors that were faster and more efficient than the previous year’s models. Both also had upgraded cameras and were NFC-ready for access to the new Apple Pay network that rolled out in October. Although the iPhone 6 was priced the same as 2013’s iPhone 5S, the Plus model was $100 more. (See launch story.)

iPhone 6S and 6S Plus

Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus arrived in September 2015.

Apple’s iPhone 6S and 6S Plus represented meaty upgrades to the 2014 models on which they were based. The 6S and 6S plus got new force touch technology called 3D Touch, as well as a beefed up 12-megapixel iSight camera that shot 4K video. (The 5-megapixel FaceTime camera was also new, and was designed to take better selfies.) Both phones ran on a faster A9 chip, and came in a new color for 2015: rose gold. (See launch story.)

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

Apple’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were released in September 2016.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus looked much like the 2015 models, with three major exceptions: Apple eliminated the audio jack, changed the home button into a haptic-based virtual button, and added a dual-camera setup in the 7S. The loss of the audio jack, a somewhat controversial move, meant users had to rely on the Apple-supplied earbuds or use their old headphones with the included adapter. Both phones ran on a quad-core A10 Fusion chip, and came in two new colors: Black (a matte-finish charcoal color) and the super shiny Jet Black. (See launch story launch story.)

iPhone 8/8 Plus

Apple’s iPhone 8 and 8 Plus were released in September 2017.

Apple introduced the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus with a new glass and aluminium enclosure, Retina HD display, A11 Bionic Chip, and wireless charging on Sept. 12, 2017. The front and back glass enclosure, which Apple said was the most durable glass ever in a smartphone, was reminiscent of the design of the iPhone 4 and 4s. True Tone technology adjusted the white balance of the display to match the surrounding light. Redesigned stereo speakers were 25% louder and delivered deeper bass.

Apple called the A11 Bionic chip “the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone.” It featured a six-core CPU with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, which were 25% and 70% faster than the A10 Fusion chip, respectively. The new iPhones included an Apple-designed GPU that delivered up to 30% faster graphics than in 2016’s iPhone 7.

Each model featured an improved 12-megapixel camera with a larger (and faster) sensor, a new color filter, deeper pixels, and capabilities for 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. ARKit in iOS 11 allowed developers to create AR games and apps offering immersive and fluid experiences. Color variations included space gray, silver, and a new version of gold.

Apple’s iPhone X arrived in November 2017.

To commemorate a decade of iPhones, Apple ended its September event with “one more thing,” the iPhone X (“ten”). Starting at $999 for 64GB and $1,149 for 256GB, it was Apple’s most expensive iPhone to date. It included a redesigned glass and stainless steel enclosure, wireless charging, and dual cameras. Its flagship feature was an edge-to-edge “Super Retina display” — a 5.8-in. OLED display that supports Dolby Vision and HDR 10. It had a pixel resolution of 458ppi, a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio, and True Tone.

Touch ID and the Home button were removed in favor of a new biometric security feature: Face ID. Face ID uses a TrueDepth camera system made up of a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator. The A11 Bionic chip works in tandem with advanced depth-sensing technologies to map and recognize a user’s face to securely unlock the iPhone or make a transaction with Apple Pay. Face ID only works when a user looks at the iPhone X directly and is designed to prevent spoofing by photos and masks.

The 7-megapixel TrueDepth front-facing camera that enables Face ID also included auto image stabilization and delivered Portrait mode for better selfies with a depth-of-field effect. The TrueDepth camera also could animate emoji, which Apple playfully calls Animoji. The dual 12-megapixel rear camera included dual optical image stabilization, and an improved f/2.4 aperature on the telephoto lens.

According to Apple, the A11 Bionic neural engine performed up to 600 billion operations per second and was designed for specific machine learning algorithms, enabling Face ID, Animoji, and other features. Colors included silver and space gray.

Apple’s iPhone Xr arrived in October 2018.

The Xr had an aluminum-and-glass design in six finishes, with improved water resistance and a 6.1-in. “Liquid Retina” display. Available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB models and starting at $749, it featured Apple’s A12 Bionic Chip with second-generation Neural Engine — the first 7-nanometer chip in a smartphone.

Portrait mode with depth control was available on the TrueDepth camera for selfies, which included support for Memoji and face tracking for Face ID authentication, while the 12-megapixel camera with an f/1.8-aperture wide-angle lens featured a new sensor and improved software algorithms for faster focusing and enhanced portraiture with depth control. Established iPhone gestures were supported, and haptic touch controls could be used to instantly launch the camera or flashlight from the home screen.

iPhone Xs and Xs Max

Apple’s iPhone Xs and Xs Max arrived in September 2018.

Featuring 5.8- and 6.5-in. all-screen designs and improved scratch- and water-resistance, Apple’s iPhone Xs and Xs Max both offered Super Retina OLED displays that supported Dolby Vision and HDR10 and had iOS system-wide color management; the Xs Max had the largest iPhone display to date, with more than 3 million pixels, and the biggest battery — promising up to an hour and a half more battery life than the iPhone X.

The 12-megapixel dual-camera system offered advanced depth segmentation in Portrait mode with the ability to adjust depth of field both in preview and post-capture for precise control in portrait creation; the system allowed for faster face tracking for Face ID, Memoji, and third-party ARKit apps. Low-light performance and image stabilization were enhanced for both still photography and video capture, in addition to an extended dynamic range for better highlight and shadow detail. Four built-in mics could record stereo sound.

These models were the first to include Apple’s A12 Bionic Chip with second-generation Neural Engine. The chip design was capable of completing up to 5 trillion operations per second (compared with 600 billion in its predecessor). Models in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB configurations started at $999 and $1,099 for the Xs and Xs Max, respectively.

The iPhone 11 arrived in September 2019.

The iPhone 11, which succeeded 2018’s iPhone XR, got a $50 price cut (to $699), a new color (purple), a redesigned two-camera system, and a number of under-the-hood technology upgrades. The screen is a 6.1-in. Liquid Retina HD display, storage comes in 64GB, 128GB or 256GB options, and the phone uses Apple’s new A13 “Bionic” processor.

The camera system features an ultra-wide camera that captures more than four times the scenery and 4K video at up to 60 frames per second. It also features audio zoom, so if you zoom in on video, the audio does, too. The front-facing camera is a 12-megapixel model that allows for slow-motion selfies, which Apple dubbed “slofies.” The camera system also offers a new “night mode” for better images in low-light conditions. According to Apple, the A13 bionic chip allows for an extra hour of use compared to the 2018 models.

iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max

The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max arrived in September 2019.

The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max succeeded 2018’s iPhone XS and XS Max, and started at $999. The phones come in four colors, including a new one (Midnight Green), and feature a wholly new three-camera system and a variety of under-the-hood technology upgrades. The screen is either a 5.8-in. or 6.5-in. Super Retina XDR display, storage cames in 64GB, 128GB or 256GB options, and the phone uses Apple’s new A13 “Bionic” processor.

The camera system features an ultra-wide camera that captures more than four times the scenery and 4K video at up to 60 frames per second. It also features audio zoom, so if you zoom in on video, the audio does too. The front-facing camera is a 12-megapixel model that allows for slow-motion selfies, which Apple dubbed “slofies.” The camera system offers a “night mode” for better images in low-light conditions.

According to Apple, the A13 bionic chip and the third-generation Neural Engine run more efficiently, allowing for up to four or five hours of additional use compared to the previous year’s models.

iPhone 12 and 12 mini

The iPhone 12 and 12 mini arrived in October and November, 2020.

The iPhone 12 took over for the iPhone 11, as Apple expanded its OLED displays across its smartphone lineup and rolled out a new 5.4-in. iPhone mini. Prices started at $699 for the mini ($100 more for the larger iPhone 12), with storage options of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB. The new Super Retina XDR displays are built with what Apple calls “Ceramic Shield” for four times better resistance to breaking if dropped.

All iPhone 12 models use the A14 Bionic chip and offered 5G networking — both the sub-6GHz and mmWave varieties. Both models offer a dual 12MP camera system with Ultra Wide and Wide cameras that include Night Mode for better photos in low-light conditions. 4K video recording can be done at 24 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps and HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 30 fps.

iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max

Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max arrived in October and November, 2020.

The iPhone 12 Pro got an even larger big brother with the 6.7-in. iPhone 12 Pro Max. Prices started at $999 for the iPhone 12 Pro ($100 more for the Pro Max), with storage options of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. The Super Retina XDR OLED displays are built with what Apple calls “Ceramic Shield” for four times better resistance to breaking if dropped.

Both Pro models use the A14 Bionic chip and offered 5G networking — both the sub-6GHz and mmWave varieties. The three-lens Pro 12MP camera system includes either a 4X or 5X optical zoom range, Night Mode for better photos in low-light conditions, and LiDAR sensors for faster focus and improved AR/VR. 4K video recording can be done at 24 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps and HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 60 fps.

iPhone 13 and 13 mini

The iPhone 13 and 13 mini arrived in September 2021.

The iPhone 13 and 13 mini picked up where the previous year’s models left off: they have the same form factor and price range as in 2020, plus a new processor and better battery life. Prices started at $699 for the mini ($100 more for the larger iPhone 13), with storage options of 128GB (twice the base amount offered last year), 256GB, and 512GB. Both models sport Apple’s Super Retina XDR displays and run on the new A15 Bionic chip.

Both also feature a 12MP dual-camera system with Ultra Wide and Wide cameras, sensor‑shift optical image stabilization for sharper photos, and “cinematic mode” for video. 4K video can be shot at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps and HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 60 fps. Both have larger batteries for up to 2.5 hours more battery life in the iPhone 13 (1.5 hours more in the mini).

iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max

The Apple iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max arrived in September 2021.

The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max are virtually identical to their predecessors (though slightly thicker and heavier). They got Apple’s newest A15 bionic processor and delivered better battery life. Prices again started at $999 (for the iPhone 13 Pro) and $1099 (for the iPhone 13 Pro Max), with storage options ranging from 128GB to a whopping 1TB. Both models again use Apple’s Super Retina XDR displays, with the Pro models getting ProMotion screens for smoother on-screen graphics.

Both feature a 12MP triple-camera system with revamped Ultra Wide and Wide cameras, “cinematic mode” for video, and macro photography. 4K video can be shot at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps and HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 60 fps. A larger battery means up to 2.5 hours more battery life in the iPhone 13 Pro Max (1.5 hours more in the 13 Pro).

iPhone 14 and 14 Plus

The Apple iPhone 14 and 14 Plus arrived in September and October 2022, respectively.

The iPhone 14 and new 14 Plus have the same form factor and price range as the previous year, with the larger Plus model replacing the discontinued iPhone 13 mini. Both use an updated version of the Bionic A15 processor — the same chip used in the 2021 models — and offer better battery life. Prices start at $799 for the iPhone 14 and $899 for the larger 14 Plus, with storage options of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.

Both models use Apple’s Super Retina XDR displays with the iPhone 14 having a 6.1-in. screen and the 14 Plus model sporting a 6.7-in. display. (Unlike the Pro models, these versions of the iPhone do not have an always-on display or any changes to the screen “notch.”) Both feature a 12MP dual-camera system with Ultra Wide and Wide cameras, sensor‑shift optical image stabilization, and cinematic and action modes for video. 4K video can be shot at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps and HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 60 fps. Pre-orders began Sept. 7, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 16 (iPhone 14) and Oct. 7 (iPhone 14 Plus).

iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max

The Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max arrived in September 2022.

The  iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max look similar to last year’s models, but get noteworthy new features, including the new A16 processor and a more powerful 48MP rear camera system. Prices are unchanged from 2021, storage options range between 128GB and 1TB, and this year brings a new “Deep Purple” color as an option. Both models again use Apple’s Super Retina XDR displays, but this year get an always-on display. (The screen dims when not in use to save on battery life, but can display as much as 2000 nits of brightness outdoors.)

Both feature a 48MP triple-camera system with tweaked Ultra Wide and Wide cameras, and the same 3X optical zoom in/2X optical zoom out as last year. 4K video can be shot at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps, HDR video recording with Dolby Vision is available at up to 60 fps, and cinematic video stabilization is available in 4K, 1080p and 720p.) Gone this year are SIM cards, which Apple has replaced with eSIMs. Pre-orders began Sept. 7, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 16.

iPhone 15 and 15 Plus

The Apple iPhone 15 and 15 Plus were released in September 2023.

The   iPhone 15 and new 15 Plus   look much like their 2022 predecessors (with prices in the same range), but offer design tweaks that include an aluminum and color-infused glass combo and new colors. Both use the Bionic A16 processor — the same chip used in the 2022 Pro models — and get USB-C charging for the first time. Prices again start at $799 for the iPhone 15 and $899 for the larger 15 Plus, with storage options remaining unchanged at 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.

Both models continue to feature Apple’s Super Retina XDR display; the iPhone 15 has a 6.1-in. screen, the 15 Plus model has a 6.7-in. display — and both get the Dynamic Island feature at the top of the screen for more interactivity with various apps. The iPhone 15 now features a revamped camera system that includes a 48-megapixel main camera, a 26 mm  ƒ/1.6 aperture, sensor‑shift optical image stabilization with support for super-high-resolution photos, and a 4x optical optical zoom range. Both models now get Roadside assistance via satellite through AAA.

Pre-orders begin Sept. 15, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 22.

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max

The Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max were released in September 2023.

The big change for the  iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max   this year involves a new Titanium-based design that cuts 19 grams of weight and allows for thinner bezels around  both models’ screens. Inside, both run Apple’s new A17 Pro processor (with 6 cores) and get a tweaked 48MP rear camera system. The main difference between the two camera systems: the Pro Max version gets a 12-megapixel 5x Telephoto feature at 120 mm with an ƒ/2.8 aperture; 3D sensor‑shift optical image stabilization and autofocus, and a new tetraprism design; the smaller Pro version features a 12-megapixel 3x Telephoto at 77 mm with an ƒ/2.8 aperture. Coming later this year on Pro models: the ability to capture spatial video for playback on Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro device.

For connectivity, the Pro models move to USB-C, with USB 3 support and Wi-Fi 6E for faster wireless speeds. Screen sizes remain the same as last year — 6.1-in. and 6.7-in. — but thinner bezels allow for a slightly smaller overall size. The mute button has been replaced with a programmable “Action” button similar to the one that debuted in 2022 on the Apple Watch Ultra. And Find My Friends gets more powerful “Precision Finding.” Storage options start at 128GB for the Pro model, 256GB for Pro Max version, and range up to 1TB.

As with the regular iPhone 15, pre-orders for the Pro models begin Sept. 15, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 22.

iPhone 16 and 16 Plus

The  iPhone 16 and 16 Plus  look much like their 2023 predecessors (and they both start at the same prices). The big news is inside: both get Apple’s new A18 processor, a 3-nanometer chip the company says is designed for Apple Intelligence — the generative AI features that will roll out later this year with iOS 18.1. Apple also made changes on the outside, bringing the “Action button” from the Pro line-up and adding a new “Camera Control” button for easier photo and video shoots. Prices again start at $799 for the iPhone 16 ($100 more for the larger 16 Plus), with storage options the same as last year: 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.

Both models feature Apple’s Super Retina XDR display; the iPhone 16 has a 6.1-in. screen, the 16 Plus has a 6.7-in. display — and both get an internal redesign that allows for a larger battery and longer battery life. Both models get a revamped camera system that includes a 48-megapixel main camera with a 2x optical telephoto capabilities and a new 12-megapixel Ultra Wide camera with autofocus for macro photography. Both models can now shoot spatial photos and video for playback on the Apple Vision Pro.

Pre-orders began Sept. 13, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 20.

iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max

The  iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max  grew a little this year and now offer larger Super Retina XDR displays; the Pro model has a 6.3-in. screen, the Pro Max gets a 6.9-in display. Both also get Apple’s new “Camera Control” button for easier photo and video shoots. Inside, both rely on Apple’s new 3-nanometer A18 Pro processor (with a 16-core neural engine) designed for Apple Intelligence — the generative AI features slated to arrive later this year with iOS 18.1. There’s also an upgraded camera system with a new 48-megapixel Fusion camera that allows for 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision and spatial photos for display on the Apple Vision Pro. 

Both devices now have four new studio-quality mics that allow users to modify sound  after it’s captured and to record Spatial audio for more immersive playback. Apple is also touting an internal redesign that allows for a bigger battery — and longer battery life. Storage options start at 128GB for the Pro model, 256GB for Pro Max version, and range up to 1TB. New for 2024 is a “Desert Titanium” color to go with Natural Titanium, White Titanium and Black Titanium.

As with the regular iPhone 16 line-up, pre-orders for the Pro models began Sept. 13, with the phones available in stores on Sept. 20.

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Ken Mingis is Executive Editor at Computerworld and oversees the day-to-day operation of, and strategic planning for, our website.

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Shockwave Medical Unveils First Clinical Outcomes of New IVL Platform in Late-Breaking Presentation at VIVA 2024

Novel intravascular lithotripsy (ivl) catheter demonstrates ability to modify calcium safely, enabling treatment and crossing of tightly-stenosed lower limb lesions technology has received u.s. fda clearance for patients with peripheral arterial disease.

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LAS VEGAS, November 4, 2024 – Shockwave Medical, Inc., part of Johnson & Johnson MedTech and a global leader in the field of circulatory restoration, announced today the first clinical outcomes associated with the Shockwave Javelin Peripheral IVL Catheter, a novel, non-balloon-based lithotripsy platform designed to modify calcium and cross extremely narrowed vessels in patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD). Despite the challenging nature of the calcified lesions studied, the 30-day results met both prespecified performance goals while showing a similar safety and effectiveness profile to balloon-based Shockwave IVL catheters. The results, which helped support U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance of the technology last month, were presented as a late breaker today at the annual Vascular InterVentional Advances (VIVA) meeting.

“The outcomes were exactly what we have come to expect from IVL studies – a strong safety profile with the low final residual stenosis that physicians would hope to achieve,” said JD Corl, MD, FACC, FSCAI, Medical Director of the PAD/CLI Program at The Lindner Center for Research and Education at The Christ Hospital and Principal Investigator of FORWARD PAD Study. † “These new initial data are promising and pave the way for a new approach to the application of Shockwave IVL in our peripheral practices. With technologies now suited to safely address both crossable and uncrossable lesions, IVL has a unique opportunity to play an increasingly important role in optimizing outcomes for a wider set of patients with PAD.”

PAD affects more than eight million people aged 40 and older in the United States. 1 People suffering from PAD have not only impaired quality of life but also increased risk of heart attack or stroke. 2 Chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) is the most advanced and serious form of PAD, impacting nearly two million patients in the U.S. It is associated with 40% major amputations at one year, and a 50% mortality rate at five years, 3 worse than most forms of cancer.

The Shockwave Javelin Peripheral IVL Catheter is a novel, non-balloon-based device that features a single 120-pulse lithotripsy emitter at the distal tip of the catheter. It is designed for use in sub-total occlusions or extremely narrowed vessels in which a wire will cross but devices will not. With this new platform, the sonic pressure waves expand spherically from the forward-shifted emitter beyond the tip of the catheter, allowing modification of the obstructive calcification that facilitates device crossing.

The Shockwave Javelin Peripheral IVL Catheter met both prespecified safety and effectiveness endpoints, with a major adverse event rate of 1.1% at 30 days, and a technical acute procedural success rate of 99%. Additionally, at final angiography, angiographic complications were restricted to a single case of dissection with no reported perforations, abrupt vessel closure, distal embolization or no-reflow.

The feasibility and IDE studies of the Shockwave Javelin IVL catheter, MINI S and FORWARD PAD, respectively, were prospective, multi-center, single-arm, angiographic core-lab adjudicated studies with similar inclusion and exclusion criteria. The studies enrolled 90 patients with 103 heavily calcified, stenotic peripheral arterial lesions. The average lesion length was 77mm, and just under half of the target lesions were located below the knee, and over a third were chronic total occlusions.

“Recognizing the risks that patients with difficult-to-cross lesions are exposed to with other treatment modalities, we’re extremely optimistic about the role that Shockwave Javelin could play in offering an effective alternative crossing and treatment tool with a strong safety profile,” said Nick West, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Shockwave Medical. “We look forward to learning more about the performance of the Shockwave Javelin IVL catheter as we add to the ongoing trial follow-up data with a limited market release of the device in the coming months.”

About Shockwave Medical Shockwave Medical, part of Johnson & Johnson MedTech, is a leader in the development and commercialization of innovative products that are transforming the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Its first-of-its-kind Intravascular Lithotripsy (IVL) technology has transformed the treatment of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease by safely using sonic pressure waves to disrupt challenging calcified plaque, resulting in significantly improved patient outcomes. Its Reducer technology, which is under clinical investigation in the United States and is CE Marked in the European Union and the United Kingdom, is designed to provide relief to the millions of patients worldwide suffering from refractory angina by redistributing blood flow within the heart. Learn more at www.shockwavemedical.com .

Cardiovascular Solutions from Johnson & Johnson MedTech Across Johnson & Johnson, we are tackling the world’s most complex and pervasive health challenges. Through a cardiovascular portfolio that provides healthcare professionals with advanced mapping and navigation, miniaturized tech, and precise ablation we are addressing conditions with significant unmet needs such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, stroke, and atrial fibrillation. We are the global leaders in heart recovery, circulatory restoration and the treatment of heart rhythm disorders, as well as an emerging leader in neurovascular care, committed to taking on two of the leading causes of death worldwide in heart failure and stroke.

About Johnson & Johnson At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more about our MedTech sector’s global scale and deep expertise in cardiovascular, orthopaedics, surgery and vision solutions at https://thenext.jnjmedtech.com . Follow us at @JNJMedTech and on LinkedIn . Shockwave Medical, Inc. is part of Johnson & Johnson MedTech.

Cautions Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections of Shockwave Medical, Inc. and/or Johnson & Johnson. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: uncertainty of commercial success; challenges to patents; competition, including technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; manufacturing difficulties and delays; product efficacy or safety concerns resulting in product recalls or regulatory action; changes to applicable laws and regulations, including global health care reforms; changes in behavior and spending patterns of purchasers of health care products and services; and trends toward healthcare cost containment. A further list and descriptions of these risks, uncertainties and other factors can be found in Johnson & Johnson’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, including in the sections captioned “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and “Item 1A. Risk Factors,” and in Johnson & Johnson’s subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at www.sec.gov , www.jnj.com or on request from Johnson & Johnson. Neither of Shockwave Medical, Inc. nor Johnson & Johnson undertakes to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments.as a result of new information or future events or developments.

Footnotes † Dr. Corl is a paid consultant for Shockwave Medical. He has not been compensated in connection with this press release.

1 https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/peripheral-artery-disease 2 https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/about/peripheral-arterial-disease.html 3 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.120.007539

Media Contact: Rachael Jarnagin [email protected]