Honestly, it’s hard to remember what our pockets felt like before June 29, 2007. We had these plastic bricks with tiny, physical buttons and screens that felt like they were made of Tupperware. Then Steve Jobs stood on a stage at Macworld in January and told everyone he was releasing three products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device.
The crowd went nuts. But here is the thing: they weren't three different gadgets. It was just one.
The first iPhone basically nuked the entire mobile industry overnight, though not everyone realized it at the time. If you look back at the actual specs today, that original device—often called the iPhone 2G—was kind of a hot mess by modern standards. It didn’t have an App Store. You couldn’t record video. You couldn’t even copy and paste text. Imagine trying to use a phone today where you had to manually retype every single address or phone number from an email.
🔗 Read more: Latest Pics of Mars: What Most People Get Wrong About the Red Planet
It sounds like a nightmare. Yet, people waited in lines for days.
Why the Original iPhone Felt Like Magic (Despite the Flaws)
You've probably heard the legendary story of the keynote. Steve Jobs was famously terrified the demo unit would crash because the software was barely finished.
The hardware was a weird mix of luxury and limitation. It had a 3.5-inch display. That sounds tiny now, but in 2007, it was a "giant screen." Most competitors, like the BlackBerry Curve or the Palm Treo, were cluttered with QWERTY keyboards that took up half the device. Apple’s big gamble was "Multi-Touch."
They bet that we didn't want plastic keys. They bet we wanted to touch the data itself.
📖 Related: Free App for Spotify: What Most People Get Wrong
The specs that time forgot:
- Storage: 4GB or 8GB (A 16GB model didn't even show up until 2008).
- Camera: 2 megapixels. No flash. No autofocus. No video.
- Network: EDGE (2G). It was painfully slow. If you tried to load a webpage while walking down the street, you had enough time to go buy a coffee before the images appeared.
- Price: $499 for the 4GB and $599 for the 8GB—on a two-year contract with AT&T.
The internet wasn't the "real" internet on other phones. It was WAP—basically a stripped-down, text-only version of the web that looked like a 1990s chat room. The iPhone gave us the actual Safari browser. It was the first time a mobile device felt like a real computer in your pocket.
What the Critics Got Hilariously Wrong
It’s easy to look back and call the first iPhone an instant success, but the "experts" were skeptical. Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer famously laughed at it. He called it the "most expensive phone in the world" and said it wouldn't appeal to business customers because it didn't have a keyboard.
Even tech journalists were brutal. Some argued that the touchscreen would be impossible to type on. Others complained about the "closed" nature of the system.
They weren't entirely wrong about the frustrations. The headphone jack was recessed so deeply into the casing that most third-party headphones wouldn't fit without an adapter. You were basically forced to use the white Apple earbuds that came in the box.
And the battery? It wasn't removable. Back then, that was a huge deal. People were used to carrying spare batteries for their Nokias. Apple told the world, "No, you'll just plug it in," and we all eventually just gave in.
The "Project Purple" Secret
Development was a total pressure cooker. Internally, it was known as "Project Purple." Apple engineers were sworn to such secrecy that even different teams within the company weren't allowed to talk to each other. If you were working on the software, you might have never seen the actual hardware until the very end.
💡 You might also like: Ting Mobile Customer Service Number: The Direct Way to Get Help Fast
The goal was to create something Steve Jobs actually wanted to use. He hated the phones of the era. He called them "brain dead."
The focus was on the "human" element. Inertial scrolling—that thing where you flick your finger and the list keeps moving and then slowly bounces at the bottom—was a revelation. It made the device feel alive. Before the iPhone, digital interfaces felt mechanical and stiff.
Key milestones of the 2007 release:
- January 9: The announcement that changed everything.
- June 29: The "iDay" launch in the US.
- September 5: Apple discontinued the 4GB model and dropped the 8GB price by $200, which made early adopters extremely salty.
- February 5, 2008: The 16GB model finally arrived for $499.
The Legacy of the 2G
The first iPhone didn't even have GPS. It used cell tower triangulation to "guess" where you were on Google Maps. There was no wallpaper—you just had a black background behind your icons.
But it sold 1.39 million units in its first year. By the time it was discontinued in 2008 to make way for the iPhone 3G, it had shifted the entire axis of the tech world. Google scrapped their existing Android prototypes (which looked a lot like BlackBerries) and went back to the drawing board to create a touch-first OS.
It’s weird to think that the most important tech product of the 21st century started as a device that couldn't even send a picture message (MMS). It was a beautiful, flawed, expensive piece of brushed aluminum and glass.
Actionable Insights for Tech Historians and Collectors
If you're looking to understand the impact or even find an original unit today, keep these points in mind:
- Check the Model Number: The original iPhone is model A1203. If you see a different number, it’s a later generation.
- The "Sealed" Trap: "Original" iPhones in factory-sealed boxes sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction now. However, many are re-shrink-wrapped fakes. Look for the specific seam patterns on the plastic.
- Software Matters: A first-gen iPhone running its original iPhone OS 1.0 is significantly rarer and more valuable than one updated to 3.1.3.
- The AT&T Lock: These phones were hard-coded for AT&T. Unlocking them in 2007 was a rite of passage for early hackers like George Hotz (geohot), marking the birth of the "jailbreaking" community.
The first iPhone wasn't just a phone; it was a shift in how humans interact with machines. We stopped looking up at the world and started looking down at our palms. For better or worse, that started in 2007.