iPhone - 10 Years Later

- Hey guys, this is Austin.
The original iPhone is ten years old today,
but how have things changed over the last decade?
Taking a look at the original iPhone today,
what jumps out to me is that it actually doesn't seem
to have changed that much over the years.
So it's still made out of aluminum,
it still has the same sort of general shape
of the current iPhone.
Yeah, it's a lot smaller,
but they actually did get a lot of stuff right
the first time.
Side by side with the iPhone 7,
there is a very clear evolution here.
The design and build quality really do hold up today,
and that is not something you can say about
other smartphones from the time.
There are definitely some issues with
the original iPhone though.
One of the big ones was that it only supported 2G network,
which was weird in a time that
3G was becoming a lot more popular.
Because of that, when AT&T shut off
their 2G network earlier this year,
it meant that the original iPhone,
short of trying to unlock it,
is no longer usable as a phone.
There are also some weird quirks
like the recessed headphone jack.
So because of how the phone was designed with this taper,
a normal pair of headphones actually will not fit in.
You're going to need some kind of extender.
The biggest issue with the orignial iPhone though was price.
When this came out back in 2007, it cost $600.
And that was on contract!
That's pretty much unheard of today.
Now to be fair, a couple months later,
Apple did drop the price to $400,
as well as discontinuing the skimpy little 4 gigabyte model,
but still, this was an incredibly expensive phone
back in the day.
All this makes a lot more sense,
though, when you look at it compared
to other smartphones of the time.
So the iPhone looks pretty clean, and to be honest,
not that different from phones today.
It's very sleek, it's very minimal.
Whereas something like the Sidekick,
which is a popular smartphone of the day,
looks a lot more
busy.
It's easy to forget just how big of deal
phones like the Sidekick were back in the day.
Oh yeah, it actually did have
the super cool sliding mechanism,
almost like a modern-day fidget spinner.
Nicely timed Ken.
But, when you look at it,
it's such a different design,
it really does feel a lot older than the iPhone.
Another major competitor was the Nokia N95.
Now while this does definitely
look like it's straight out of 2007,
there are actually a lot of cool things that
this could do the iPhone couldn't.
One of the main ones was actually the camera.
Now the iPhone did have a camera,
but this actually has a pretty solid
5 megapixel auto-focus camera.
It also has a little shutter thing, which is kinda cool.
It also had a front-facing camera,
which the iPhone didn't get until the iPhone 4,
it supported 3G, and to top it all off,
it had not only T9 when you slide it up,
when you slide it down, you actually had media controls.
Selfie time!
(shutter click)
Alright, that's a little crunchy, but gotta focus here, and
(shutter click)
That actually doesn't look bad.
Honestly, this is probably a little bit better
than some budget smartphones I've tried recently.
Move over to the iPhone and not only do we get the awesome,
old-school slide to unlock,
but there is a slightly less impressive
2 megapixel camera here.
Wow, it's not that bad,
but iPhones have definitely come a long way
as far as cameras go.
What really set the iPhone apart though, was its software.
The hardware itself was fairly underpowered,
but what they were able to really nail was iPhone OS.
There was a lot missing when this first launched though.
Not only was there no multitasking,
but it didn't even have an App Store until the second year.
But, what really saved it were the fundamentals
were absolutely there.
Stuff like scrolling felt way more natural
than pretty much any other phone on the market,
and its definitely multi-touch was really cool.
Keep in mind, back in the day,
most phones didn't even have touchscreens,
and the ones that did typically used a stylus.
The iPhone and iPhone OS was a huge leap.
(box lands)
But,
that's not all.
Inside this slightly suspicious-looking black box is
a prototype for the original iPhone.
Now the hardware itself is basically unchanged
compared to current iPhones that actually ended up shipping,
but what is different about this
is the actual software experience.
There was a ton of secrecy around the original iPhone,
so much so that they created a super basic UI so that
if something did leak,
no one would really know what they were up to.
It was also helpful for testing,
as you can see, we have all kinds of different options.
But what's cool is that it has the little
SkankPhone Easter egg on the bottom.
All the basic functions of the phone are here.
So not only could you get and receive SMSes,
but there's also a bunch of pre-programmed test messages,
which sadly don't work since this isn't on a network.
There's also the phone dialer,
you can get to the camera, which in theory will work,
although it might not the prettiest thing in the world.
But this really was meant for testing.
There's also a full diagnostic menu,
which can show everything from the WiFi,
the Bluetooth, the accelerometer.
See if the touch screen is working.
You can see the camera, buttons.
There's a lot of very interesting stuff with this.
Yes, it's a prototype and
it was really meant more for avoiding leaks than
anything else, but it's a cool piece of Apple history.
After ten years,
it's hard to argue with how important this iPhone was.
Pretty much any modern smartphone today
owes at least something to the OG.
So, what do you guys think about the original iPhone?
Let me know in the comments below
and I will catch you on the next one.

iPhone - 10 Years Later

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