15 Features the Original iPhone Didn't Have When First Announced

[webkit]

The first iPhone was basically just eye candy. It looked futuristic compared to the other smartphones. But it was very limited.

It was also a way for Apple to start to bring iPods, which were wildly popular, and cell phones into one device. Even though Apple was new to the phone business, they already had a strong customer base and were quite successful in the consumer electronics hardware business including mobile devices.

Instead of buying an iPod and a cell phone, you could get one device that did both (especially as music streaming was becoming popular) and more.

 

[firewood]

Barometer. IIRC, Not added till the iPhone 6.

Also added and removed: Force Touch

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Wait, there's more!

• Having to use a dongle to listen through a decent pair of headphones.

Actually, the original iPhone had a recessed headphone jack, so for a lot of headphones you did have to use an adapter.
Go back and watch the introduction of the iPhone 3G, the audience roared when Steve announced that the headphone jack on that one was flush.
Also, this goes without saying but Facebook and Twitter aren’t using your microphones, because they don’t have to.

 

[MrGrell]

Yup!

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

As much as I appreciate how far that iOS and the iPhone have come over the years, it’s laughable to look back at Steve Jobs’ bold words during the first iPhone announcement, in which he outright said (paraphrased) that the iPhone uses OS X (his words were marked with a slide in the background that showed the characteristic “X” of OS X that was used for many years).

We all know what B.S. that was.

iOS was a severely stripped-down version of OS X, especially due to the lack of copy-paste for a few years. As I recall, even Android and the competitors had copy-paste before iOS did.

I mean, he wasn’t wrong.
I think it’s very important, and it was very deliberate, that he said “iPhone runs OS X,” not “iPhone runs Mac OS X Tiger,” which it obviously didn’t.
The first generation Apple TV however did actually run a severely cut down version of Tiger, and it’s actually possible to install a full version of Tiger onto that Apple TV.

By the way, this hierarchy of operating system still very much exists today.
macOS is on top, which is what iOS and by extension iPad OS is based off of, and watchOS and tvOS are birthed from iOS.
Another true statement, the HomePod runs tvOS, even if it doesn’t have the same features

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

1 feature from iPhone OS 2 (2008) (app store)
2 feature from iPhone OS 3 (2009) (copy/paste and texting pictures)
1 feature from iPhone 3GS (2009) (video recording)
4 features from iPhone 4 (2010) (front camera, flash, Verizon, and Retina)
1 feature from iOS 4 (2010) (wallpaper)
1 feature from iPhone 4S (2011) (Siri)
1 feature from iPhone 5 (2012) (Lightning)
1 feature from iPhone 5S (2013) (Touch ID)
1 feature from iPhone 7 (2016) (water resistance)
1 feature from iPhone 8 (2017) (wireless charging)

I knew the iPhone was feeling stagnant, but wow, I think this is way worse than even I imagined.

80% of these improvements were in the first five years.
20% of these improvements were in the next five years (so just one quarter the initial rate of improvement)
0% of these improvements were in the past five years.

Also noteworthy - 80% of the improvements happened under Steve Jobs. I'd bet that Apple was probably working on 100% of the features on this list under Steve - probably they would have all been out in 2014 under his guidance and we'd see another boat load of features and produces in the 8 years since then if they weren't stuck with Tim Cook as CEO.

 

[cmaier]

I disagree. My Palm Treo had copy and paste, could take pictures, send and receive emails, surf the web on Edge (though it was a painful experience by today's standards), play mp3 music files, accept SD card for expansion which is still not possible on an iPhone, capable of running apps from various sources to name a few.

First iphone was way behind in many ways. It just had the touch sensitive display and no physical keyboard to differentiate it from the others. It was far from being ideal.

I disagree. My Palm Treo had to dial-up the internet whenever I needed network connectivity. The SDK was terrible— I wrote Palm apps, and you had to essentially draw everything on the screen yourself and reference count every variable manually. The screen was tiny and image quality was bad. The resistive touch screen sucked. Typing on the physical keyboard was not signficantly more convenient than typing on a virtual keyboard.

 

[casjohnr]

On the flip side of things I've just read the back of my original iPhone box :-

Includes: iPhone, Stereo headset with mic, Dock, Dock Connector to USB 2.0 Cable, and USB Power Adapter

Now you just get the iPhone and USB Type-C to Lightning cable

 

[cmaier]

On the flip side of things I've just read the back of my original iPhone box :-

Includes: iPhone, Stereo headset with mic, Dock, Dock Connector to USB 2.0 Cable, and USB Power Adapter

Now you just get the iPhone and USB Type-C to Lightning cable

Of course, when we bought the original iPhone, none of us had most of that stuff already cluttering up junk drawers in our houses (the cable from an iPod would work, of course, though lots of us had FireWire iPod cables )

 

[klasma]

I bought my first iPhone (3GS) after iOS got cut&paste in version 3. Before I was dumbfounded that anyone would release such a device without that basic feature. I had previously owned a Palm Pilot for many years.

 

[macwh0re]

Can't forget 3G data. The first iPhone launched with 2G/EDGE while many other phones already had 3G.

 

[macwh0re]

I bought my first iPhone (3GS) after iOS got cut&paste in version 3. Before I was dumbfounded that anyone would release such a device without that basic feature. I had previously owned a Palm Pilot for many years.

A lot of people were. It was a brand new piece of hardware that had brand new software built from the ground up. It lacked many features that other phones had at the time but what it lacked in features it made up for in build quality and experience. I remember not being able to text a picture lmao.

 

[cmaier]

Can't forget 3G data. The first iPhone launched with 2G/EDGE while many other phones already had 3G.

Also no GPS.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Living through 2007-to the present with iPhones was the best years ever in smartphones and the experience was amazing how everything kept advancing from pictures to gps to apps. Glad I got to experience it

And always waiting years for features other phones had. I ditched iPhone after the 4 because it was mind numbing what basic functions iPhones still could not do at that point, and how long it took Apple to dole out features that had been on competing phones for years. At the time of the 4, no one was i-cloing anymore and was leapfrogging Apple.

I'm glad to be back on an iPhone again because the user experience with my other devices it great... but until the last couple of years (their own chips, displays that were not pathetically behind and only good in their own marketing hype) it finally became a phone that didn't feel like a compromise to have an ecosystem. The devout that never had anything else likely don't really know what they were missing or were drunk on the kool-aid believing years outdated tech was superior (because Apple would always act like it was by calling things "retina-displays" with marketing hype that lacked the reality of how many generations behind their display tech was (some budget Android phones at a 3rd of the cost had better displays). Hell, the iPhone 11 was still 720P which was hidden under the retina crap. It was an awful, dim, crappy, display bested by $200 phones.

 

[supremedesigner]

I pulled out my original iPhone and played with it today. The first feature I missed? Moving the cursor with the space bar.

What’s that icon or graph thing between battery icon and time display??

 

[Aquaporin]

I miss the world before smart phone ubiquity.

 

[jchap]

Having every single OSX feature would have just taken up storage space and done nothing; e.g. back then they’d have seen no need for printer or keyboard handling as there wasn’t any use for that on a phone. Apple would then have created new UI components specifically for a phone, e.g. larger touch friendly buttons, toggles, etc.

Hmm. It's interesting how iOS can now support printers and external keyboards as well, though. I suppose that you could plug in external peripherals as well to your iPhone like flash storage devices, although I've never done it.

I guess I was more curious as to whether Jobs' statement was actually based in reality or just the ideas of their marketing division. Was the kernel of iOS actually ported from Mac OS X and then stripped down and modified, then? I wonder how much they actually had to rework, before they decided that the OS had be a totally different thing to fit the use case.

 

[Sir_Macs_A_Lot]

It was funny how the iPhone didn't have 'Copy & Paste' because Jobs said it wasn't a feature users needed. I love how he used to tell us what we wanted in a device we'd spend our hard earned money on.

Now add TouchID into all versions of the iPhone 14, Tim Apple!

 

[nt5672]

There was a nearly 7-month gap from the original iPhone keynote to product release. Most new Apple products today are made available within 2 weeks of the announcement.

Was the release date delayed? I don't remember that and I had the very first iPhone.

 

[klasma]

And always waiting years for features other phones had.

The thing that started to slow Apple down at some point is that they have to source all components to the scale of hundreds of million units sold per year. For this reason, Apple can’t easily (or at all) implement certain hardware features that manufactures with much much lower unit sales can. That aspect will continue to handicap Apple for the foreseeable future.

 

[klasma]

What’s that icon or graph thing between battery icon and time display??

Bluetooth battery: https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/iphone-icons-symbols.jpeg

 

[gumbyhw]

the Front camera wasn’t needed for selfies. That shiny Apple logo on the back was supposed to be the selfie mirror. The front camera was added for FaceTime.

(actually I think the front camera was needed, but what I described above was Apple’s reasoning.)

 

[mashoutposse]

Was the release date delayed? I don't remember that and I had the very first iPhone.

First iPhone keynote: 1/9/07. iPhone US launch: 6/29/07.

 

[jchap]

Now add TouchID into all versions of the iPhone 14, Tim Apple!

Actually, I prefer Face ID. I've had a terrible time with Touch ID on ALL of my Apple devices, because of my dry skin. My fingerprints are possibly difficult to read. Touch ID fails nearly all the time for me, especially during the winter months, on every Apple device I own. I set a fingerprint (or two), and a day or two later, it fails, and I have to repeat the process. I can't imagine that it's just me out of all of the millions and millions of users with Touch ID on their devices, although perhaps I'm in the minority.

 

[jchap]

I miss the world before smart phone ubiquity.

Why?