iPhone Was Missing These 10 Essential Features When Unveiled in 2007

[AgeOfSpiracles]

I didn’t say it was perfect. But baby steps forward. At the time it was certainly better than iPhone.

FWIW, I had an HTC (TyTN? I think?), with Windows Mobile 5. The list of features certainly made it seem like it would do what I needed for some light work in theory. But in practice, it almost always failed to help me accomplish anything but that absolute simplest of task... sometimes. I'd always have to dig out my laptop, or walk over to my desktop. What you were left with was a kinda cool, mostly useless brick... and it was a chonky boy. After about 6 months, I traded it in for a Razr, which at the time was actually cooler and a much better phone (back when that mattered, lol).

 

[timber]

My experience is similar. Impressive spec list but quite frustrating in most common tasks. And almost unusable without the pen.
It was indeed quite capable if you really needed it's specs not a delightful device like the first iPhone. Even Nokia's top of line phones were nicer.

 

[Michael Scrip]

It can't play CDs or cassettes, receive AM/FM radio broadcasts, transmit or receive CB radio, detect radar, scan radio channels...

Yeah the iPhone can't play CDs or cassettes... but it can play music which I think was the point.

You're right about AM/FM, CB, radio scanner, and being a fuzzbuster, though. I wonder how the author of the Engadget article missed that? The iPhone can't do any of those things!

+1 to you, sir.

 

[toke lahti]

• Copy and Paste: It may seem hard to believe, but the ability to copy and paste in Calendar was not added to the iPhone in 2024.

 

[StyxMaker]

When the first iPhone was introduce, every time one of their adds came on TV, I’d just say no thanks, I can already do that with my Windows phone. One day I went into an AT&T store to see what was new in Windows phones. Just inside the door they had the iPhone on display set up so the customer could use it. Out of curiosity I stopped and picked it up to see what it was like to use.

I left with a new first generation iPhone and I’ve been using them ever since.

 

[StyxMaker]

Almost immediately after the initial price drop I traded in my Windows Mobile Phone. Can't remember the brand but it had a slide out keyboard that flipped the screen horizontally. With the glitchy WinMo OS it would freeze part way 30% of the time.

I gladly gave up copy/paste, video recording and 3G service to have a smartphone that was incredibly stable and much more sleek. Hah, I do remember attempting to use Google Maps to navigate without GPS. It used cell tower triangulation which was a very rough estimate of where you were and couldn't do turn-by-turn, you had to click next like a digital version of MapQuest. Looking back the photos it took in 2007 were pretty spectacular compared to a lot of other camera phones.

I didn't last long without an App Store though. I think I jailbroke it only a couple months after picking it up. Continued to jailbreak every one until around iPhone 5 when we finally got all the software features I wanted.

From my experience the first gen iPhone was not all that stable. I remember force quitting frozen apps several time a day and resetting the os on a regular basis. With both the early Windows Mobile phone and the first few generations of iPhone os I habitually preformed a reset before I plugged them in for synching and charging.

 

[StyxMaker]

If you are talking about Windows Mobile devices (Pre- Windows Phone 7) they were the 2nd most popular smartphoens in the early 2000s along side Blackberries.Most touchscreen smartphones WERE windows mobile smartphones (blackberry wasnt touch till 2008 with the crappy Storm).

So they were quite popular and common.

If you are talking about Windows Phone 7 they were ehh in the US....but started picking up traction in European countries.

Windows phone 8/8.1 with the Lumia line definitely made them a bit more ubiquitous and they were even more popular than iPhones in certain regions. The Lumia 520 was outselling iPhones in a number of European Regions.

Microsoft aquired Nokia's hardware and aside from the 640 (which was a fairly popular device) they dropped the ball majorly with all future Lumia releases and WIndows 10 mobile was a disaster and thus the platform died.

In short, they were fairly common for awhile.

My progression of mobile devices went from Palm Pilot IIe -> Pocket PC -> Windows Mobile phone -> iPhone. The Palm pilot IIe is in a time capsule waiting to be opened in the future.

 

[Kar98]

FWIW, I had an HTC (TyTN? I think?), with Windows Mobile 5. The list of features certainly made it seem like it would do what I needed for some light work in theory. But in practice, it almost always failed to help me accomplish anything but that absolute simplest of task... sometimes. I'd always have to dig out my laptop, or walk over to my desktop. What you were left with was a kinda cool, mostly useless brick... and it was a chonky boy. After about 6 months, I traded it in for a Razr, which at the time was actually cooler and a much better phone (back when that mattered, lol).

The entire xda developers site came about from people trying to make these damn things more usable. With much success! Customs ROMS were the shizznit!

 

[ResolutionNZ]

I stayed away from the iPhone until the original SE. It wasn't as good as a mid 2000's Nokia in terms of software feature set until around that time...

 

[Christopher Kim]

Ballmer was at least right to "laugh" at the price. As it turned out, the price of the iPhone was notably reduced less than three months after launch and reduced further the following year. The 8GB iPhone went from $599 (with 2 year AT&T contract) to just $199 (with 2 year AT&T contract) in one year.

Ballmer's reaction would’ve likely been a bit different if iPhones had launched at the lower prices.

I remember this, as I got the first iPhone the first week it launched. After the price drop, there was a huge outcry from the early adopters who had paid much more just a few months before, and Apple gave all of us I think $200 Apple gift cards... I remember I used it to buy the Bose Portable Sounddock, which I kept for many years!

 

[MacFarmer]

oh it was and is an amazing phone! Got one on day one, shipped it to Europe and had to use SIM sandwich hack, to trick it to think it was ATT network, but it worked flawlessly. Still have mine somewhere, and one brand new. The only feature I was happy to get was copy and paste. And even that was not sooo essential. Wish I could get something like this "dumb smartphone" now, just with updated connectivity. For my personal use, new phones are too smart, and I can't resist wasting too much time on them

 

[Green Valkyrie]

The entire xda developers site came about from people trying to make these damn things more usable. With much success! Customs ROMS were the shizznit!

Always used to love saying "I've just flashed a cooked ROM on my phone"

Was a great waste of time back in the day, at the same time so glad it's gone. I've still got my old Vario 2 (HTC Hermes) in a drawer. First time my children saw it they thought it looked amazing with its buttons and slide out keyboard. Then I turned it on

Most people of course had no idea what these devices were capable of and quite reasonably assumed the iPhone was the first handheld device capable of browsing the internet.

 

[webkit]

I remember this, as I got the first iPhone the first week it launched. After the price drop, there was a huge outcry from the early adopters who had paid much more just a few months before, and Apple gave all of us I think $200 Apple gift cards... I remember I used it to buy the Bose Portable Sounddock, which I kept for many years!

Yes, there was a big outcry although the gift card amount was $100 not $200. I'm not sure what Apple/AT&T were thinking pricing the iPhone quite so high at launch.

 

[No5tromo]

3G should be at the top. When iPhone was released in 2007 basic Ericsson and Nokia models were already supporting 3G, and let's not forget that "i" stood for Internet, and Steve Jobs emphasised over and over in that presentation how the iPhone was an Internet device yet your Internet mobile device didn't have Internet access unless you carried a mobile router with you.

 

[ric22]

I had the original iPod Touch (which was sadly stolen when I fell asleep while listening to music on a bus in China). It was a very limited device, but the touch input was ahead of its time.

 

[AgeOfSpiracles]

I had the original iPod Touch (which was sadly stolen when I fell asleep while listening to music on a bus in China). It was a very limited device, but the touch input was ahead of its time.

I think mine was a gen 2, but yeah it was my first apple product that wasn't just a straight iPod. Prior to that I was pretty meh on the iPhone hype and a Apple hater in general. That was the product that opened my eyes when I got one for my birthday.

 

[Scoob Redux]

I found an old iphone 5S in one of my drawers the other day... And holding it in my hand I wondered how the heck I did anything on that tiny little screen... Seems useless to have that size now.

Unless you have enough money to have multiple Apple devices for all use cases. iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, Mac Cinema Display, and Apple TV connected to 77" LG OLED. I consume my media in whatever format is best. So, of course, I want my phone to just be a phone. I have other devices for consuming video content. Of course, the low end of the market can only afford one device, so they buy a giant iPhone because they can't afford big screens elsewhere.

 

[bigjnyc]

Unless you have enough money to have multiple Apple devices for all use cases. iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, Mac Cinema Display, and Apple TV connected to 77" LG OLED. I consume my media in whatever format is best. So, of course, I want my phone to just be a phone. I have other devices for consuming video content. Of course, the low end of the market can only afford one device, so they buy a giant iPhone because they can't afford big screens elsewhere.

Totally false. I have an M3 16" MBP, I have an 11" iPad pro, and I have 6 LED tv's in my house, the smallest being 42"... Yet I consume most of my content on my phone and always prefer the biggest screen. Buying the biggest screen iphone has absolutely nothing to do with what people can afford, and that's just a silly conclusion being that the big screen iphone is the more expensive option.

 

[Scoob Redux]

Totally false. I have an M3 16" MBP, I have an 11" iPad pro, and I have 6 LED tv's in my house, the smallest being 42"... Yet I consume most of my content on my phone and always prefer the biggest screen. Buying the biggest screen iphone has absolutely nothing to do with what people can afford, and that's just a silly conclusion being that the big screen iphone is the more expensive option.

That's my point - for lower-income users, it makes more sense to buy the biggest (most expensive) iPhone and consume ALL content on that one device, versus buying a smaller phone as well as multiple other devices optimized for different viewing cases. They can only afford one, so they want it BIG.