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My original iPhone still works. I can't say that about a lot of other Apple products I've purchased since then.
Yes, it works but it is sooo crippled. If you have to reset it, you’re not going to get a lot working on it. A lot of the integration no longer works. When my 6s plus broke and I was waiting for the 11 to come out, I was stuck using the 3GS for 2 months. It got me by but man it was painful. ?? and yes to the other person who commented on the size, it is really tiny compared to what you are used to today.
 
I remember at the time I had to carry around an on-call flip phone for work and absolutely hated it. I swore I'd never own a cellphone. Then the first iPhone happened and I've been hooked ever since.
 
I have a love hate relationship with Apple

I have had an iPhone since the 4GS and always hated how they put Blackberry out of business… I was a keyboard guy at heart

If I could have a Blackberry Bold, iOS, and iPhones battery Life… life would be sweet
 
aside from the notch, the iPhone 14 design is pretty much the same since iPhone 12. the real excitement will come in iPhone 16.
 
Never had the OG, first was a 3Gs, I don't remember it being that small or that person has HUGE hands.
My first was a 3GS as well. The screen was pretty much the size of a credit card way back then. Fortunately I do still have it. Unusable now of course but I can charge it up still and listen to songs
 
I remember that day well. I was super frustrated with the available tech at the time. Sidekick and blackberry and even windows phones were just not giving what I wanted (and many others too obviously). This was the phone i’d been waiting for. Today it is everything and more than we could have ever imagined yet people still complain about non issues like a notch. Such as life I guess.
 
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I remember when it came out (I still have it!) and thought that is was so much larger than what I was used too (Razer) yes now when I look at it, I can't imagine wanting a screen so small. And when the others later cam out with "Phrablets" I thought those were so large… and yet again… now that I have the Pro Max I love the size. It's perfect.
My girlfriend at the time referred to my 3G as a brick because it was so big, but she soon went to large Android phones, while I have stuck with the smallest iPhone available, and wish my 12 Mini was smaller.
 
The other internet communicators were absolutely laughable in comparison and not on the same level.

I wouldn't necessarily call them "absolutely laughable" as it really depended on what one wanted/needed. Various competitors still saw strong sales growth in the years following the launch of iPhone. It wasn't really until after 2010 or 2011 when things started to decline for the likes of BB, Nokia, Palm. I think Android was responsible for this decline as much or more than iPhone/iOS. To remain competitive during these earlier years, Apple also had to cut iPhone prices fairly significantly.
 
Yep, still have my original as well. Found it again when we were packing to move recently. Still works when plugged in but battery dies in about 5 minutes if unplugged. Went through a slew of handheld items before that like the Newton, psion, Handspring, Palm, etc. iPhone was amazing because it took those things and coupled it with a phone so that I was no longer carrying my Startac and an organizer.

Those were truly fun days!
 
If you describe the iPhone this way, it sounds as if the iPhone was a mediocre device. But you have to see it in comparison to the smartphones that were on sale in 2006. There was AFAIR no device with such a screen and such small bezels (those didn’t even were important at the time). And the idea of just a single home button and nothing else was very innovative at a time, when most phones had full numpads.

The camera was bad even for its time though. There were cheap phones with much better cameras.
I believe the LG Prada was the first phone with a Capacitive Touch screen, but yeah in terms of the iPhones design overall it was very unique and INCREDIBLY bold with it’s one button, it looked insane actually, it’s crazy to think what the smartphone world was in 2006/2007 and then what it quickly changed to between 2008-present, those late 2000s and early 2010s were especially a wild time in Smartphones, lol!

When the iPhone was announced I was using a Nokia N80, Symbian S60 OS based smartphone with T9 keypad that I was super fast on typing with, and I honestly didn’t believe the iPhone would make it ??? I think there is plenty of post history under my name, of me not at all convinced by iPhone in a number of forums including this one.

The iPhone really flipped everything on its head, suddenly you are driving the entire UI with your finger/thumb, that was absolutely unheard of in mobile at the time, it seemed so unrealistic, but this was due to the subpar experience devices that were around then had. Anytime Smartphones brought a new big feature in the 2000s the feature would be half baked and also somewhat cumbersome, there had not been a manufacturer who was as consistent as Apple is in on BOTH Hardware and Software, so we had never seen such a high level of commitment to something so different and revolutionary.

Back then a smartphone needed to have buttons to compensate either for lack of touchscreen (Symbian S60), or poor touch experience (Most touch phones were using resistive screens with a poorly optimized touch experience and UI mostly driven by button or jog dial navigation) this applies to Symbian UIQ, Windows Mobile and Linux Mobile (Motorola had many of these at the time) devices, these devices all had multiple layers of fallback/redundancy to cover up areas where the manufacturers had not fully committed to fixing/improving. Of course Email on phones was also becoming huge back then so a physical keyboard that is great in terms of size and tactility was #1 priority, the iPhone design threw the middle finger at all that, lol. Now here we are 15 years later typing away on iPhones that have completely eliminated that oh so loved Home button, incredible.
 
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This is when I dived into the Apple ecosystem. I remember watching this presentation and being blown away. I loved listening to music. I had an iPod already, but this was amazing. Seeing the album art on the screen, scrubbing through the song and the volume bar, opening up a web browser, playing video in (what was then) crystal-clarity…

Apple really got it right with the iPhone.
 
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Can't believe it's been that long. I remember driving around checking store lines for one of my analyst clients, which wanted to measure demand.
 
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15 years ago, Steve Jobs changed the phone industry. Steve's job is one of the reasons why I love the iPhone.

View attachment 1941510

Update: 01/09/2022 at 07:42AM PST.

I finally found this original article MacRumors posted. Dated: Tuesday, January 9, 2007, 10:52 am PST. Time flies! 🥲 Game changer.

Ditto. Bought my 1st Mac about five months after buying my 1st iPhone, which I bought based on the keynote. The Halo effect got me!
 
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