Other Who Started Small in the World of iPhone?

[Parowdy]

Got the 4 when my godfather got a 5s. iOS 7 was quite the visual step up from my iPod touch‘s iOS 3/6. Sadly it soon performed like an old racing horse.
Then I got his 5s when he got the 6s, which I „let“ fall into a body of water like 1 year later, which is when I got the SE.
I still have it and playing with it reminds me of the simper days of one-handed use and single camera.
Then it was the X, 11 Pro and now 15 Pro.
Old iPhones retrospectively humbled me, I’ll never forget the Touch ID and bezel days, the simple ways iOS enriched the life’s of people before Apple finally ventured into new territories, like widgets and a customizable Control Center.
We’ve come quite far haven’t we?
I see young people that don’t even know a world before Night Shift, Dark Mode, 1000+ nits and AirPods and am happy I got to experience these transitional periods between 2010 and today so I don’t take what we have for granted.

 

[triumvirate]

I started with a White iPhone 4. That was probably my favorite iPhone model I've had until this 17PM. The iPhone 4 had its issues, but that White model was beautiful and nice to carry around.

 

[eyoungren]

Old iPhones retrospectively humbled me, I’ll never forget the Touch ID and bezel days, the simple ways iOS enriched the life’s of people before Apple finally ventured into new territories, like widgets and a customizable Control Center.
We’ve come quite far haven’t we?
I see young people that don’t even know a world before Night Shift, Dark Mode, 1000+ nits and AirPods and am happy I got to experience these transitional periods between 2010 and today so I don’t take what we have for granted.

iOS 6 has widgets. They were just limited at the time to the dashboard. Apple took them away for a few years, but then reintroduced them, allowing them on to the homescreen but without transparent backgrounds.

This is a screencap of my 4s running iOS 6. Back when I was jailbroken, Dashboard X was able to take iOS 6 widgets and put them on the homescreen. Because of iFile, I could edit the background PNG file, make it transparent and copy it to the phone.



I had f.lux, Dark Mode and various other stuff long before Apple allowed it. All during the time period you mention, but not according to Apple's schedule. It took Apple until around 2021 to start catching up.

The 4s would not have been the phone I used in this time period though. That would have been my 5, 6+ and 6s+. But digging through the multitude of homescreen screenshots posted to the jailbreak forum (here on MacRumors) is a slog. A lot of changes over time.

PS. What I find interesting now is the attitude about jailbreaking. That has changed around here. 2010 or so up to a few years ago I could expect to be criticized or admonished in the main iPhone forum, but now stock iOS is close to what I used to screencap and show here and it's mostly tolerance I see or at worst disinterest.

That journey has been interesting to see play out on MacRumors.

 

[uacd]

iPhone 5 was so peak that Yung Lean turned it into the artwork of one of his songs. P.S: home button design was a huge part of this aesthetic. I didn’t mind Touch ID in 5s tho

 

[uacd]

Got the 4 when my godfather got a 5s. iOS 7 was quite the visual step up from my iPod touch‘s iOS 3/6. Sadly it soon performed like an old racing horse.
Then I got his 5s when he got the 6s, which I „let“ fall into a body of water like 1 year later, which is when I got the SE.
I still have it and playing with it reminds me of the simper days of one-handed use and single camera.
Then it was the X, 11 Pro and now 15 Pro.
Old iPhones retrospectively humbled me, I’ll never forget the Touch ID and bezel days, the simple ways iOS enriched the life’s of people before Apple finally ventured into new territories, like widgets and a customizable Control Center.
We’ve come quite far haven’t we?
I see young people that don’t even know a world before Night Shift, Dark Mode, 1000+ nits and AirPods and am happy I got to experience these transitional periods between 2010 and today so I don’t take what we have for granted.

If you still have 4 you can downgrade it back to iOS 6, 5 or 4. I don’t remember the method but I believe old iTunes is needed, done it on my 4 and it is so neat to look at. It doesn’t lag like iOS 7 but has other issues like zero app support and non-functional App Store, tho. But from the collector’s and nostalgic standpoints it is awesome.

All these nits and orange/dark modes came after Apple introduced OLED displays and lots of people still have issues with them. And it got better only after they added actual PWM switch in iPhone 17. It literally took them 8 years to implement🙁

But the main irony is that I’ve never had eye strain on any skeoumorphic iOS version like 6, 5, 4 or earlier. It all started after minimalist iOS 7 with lots of useless white colors in the UI and weird minimal icons that I still had not adjusted to.

I think that the main advantage of the modern iOS is that it can finally connect flash drives+have some sort of file system with Files app, albeit very limited. But still no “eject” button, Apple doesn’t really care about health and lifespan of storage devices that we connect to our phones

 

[Mrbobb]

Started with the 4S, the one that resembles a Leica Camera, then moved to SE1, and only recently was forced to move on to (new to me), 13 Mini, keeping my preference for small size.

 

[racerhomie]

I had 2 iPhone 2Gs in 2011. Loved both of them

 

[AlixSPQR]

My first iPhone was purchased in the springtime of 2017, an iPhone SE after I wrecked a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. I knew that the SE was the humblest of iDevices at the time, but in the 18 months I used it I realized that Apple was something special. That little phone was quite a step up from the Android quagmire. Eventually I moved on to an iPhone 8+ for 4 years, followed by a 13.

I'm curious who else started their Apple experience with what would be considered a "humble" model? I tell ya, I was so impressed with the SE that I was not hesitant to get a new 16e a couple of months ago. Anybody else start off small?

I was gifted a 5s ten years ago. That’s how it started.