Why didn't 1st gen design get two cycles?

[thadoggfather]

It seems like people still herald the 1st gen iPhone design, and it wasn't susceptible to cosmetic or RF issues, so I wonder why it only had one iteration of use for all of its R&D before moving onto the 3G plastic for two cycles, the sandwiched glass for two cycles, and now this monolithic two toned look that has been used for two cycles.

 

[joshcls]

Not sure... Kinda bummed that I'm on the "s" cycle and not the other way around, because I owned the original iPhone. I feel almost punished for being an early adopter...

 

[cambookpro]

I think it was easier to mass produce (around 6 million 1st gens sold versus in excess of 20 million 3Gs sold) and it also made it cheaper - a lot cheaper.

They wanted everyone to have an iPhone and halving the price didn't hurt.

I guess they went back to 'premium' materials for the 4 as they figured they'd sell enough, and it also gave them a differentiating feature from the exclusively-plastic Android phones beginning to gain traction.

 

[ant1298]

Interesting....I've thought of it before but never bothered asking.

Perhaps it has something to do with Apple hadn't made up it's mind on how it was going to go about releasing the phones.
Perhaps they decided they didn't like it and therefore were so disgusted by it they wanted to change it straight away.
From memory the cycle was only 180 days ish? if I'm correct, perhaps the phone was a pilot study for the 3G, gauge public interest and all that jazz. You may ask why not just release the 3G? It might have something to do with cost of the phone.

At the end of the day someone may have a better ideas then I have just come up with. Only Apple will really know....Or perhaps they don't.....

Anthony

 

[cambookpro]

Interesting....I've thought of it before but never bothered asking.

Perhaps it has something to do with Apple hadn't made up it's mind on how it was going to go about releasing the phones.
Perhaps they decided they didn't like it and therefore were so disgusted by it they wanted to change it straight away.
From memory the cycle was only 180 days ish? if I'm correct, perhaps the phone was a pilot study for the 3G, gauge public interest and all that jazz. You may ask why not just release the 3G? It might have something to do with cost of the phone.

At the end of the day someone may have a better ideas then I have just come up with. Only Apple will really know....Or perhaps they don't.....

Anthony

iPhone (1st gen) came out June 29 2007. 3G came out July 11 2008.

A total of 378 days - I think your memory may be slightly off

 

[ant1298]

iPhone (1st gen) came out June 29 2007. 3G came out July 11 2008.

A total of 378 days - I think your memory may be slightly off

It would have taken me a few clicks to check the buyers guide, but I trusted my memory. Darn! Well scrap my last pointer.

Has it already been pointed out that the 3G would probably be cheaper to manufacture? If so ignore me I'm using tapatalk so can't see previous comments while replying

Anthony

 

[ant1298]

Alongside this question we could think about why Apple chose the naming for the phone. The first was called the iPhone, retrospectively the iPhone original/2G. The next was called the 3G, because it was able to connect to the 3G network (unlike the 2G). Then Apple changed it's naming to number order and has ever since. I guess you could claim the original iPhone took both the 1st and 2nd iterations because it is know under both names.

Then if you looked at iPads Apple have used number orders from the 1st gen.

I wonder why? Thoughts?

Perhaps I should just go to bed and stop asking questions with no answers.....

Something I found on my travels around the web:

 

[Kurso]

Not sure... Kinda bummed that I'm on the "s" cycle and not the other way around, because I owned the original iPhone. I feel almost punished for being an early adopter...

I'm still on a iPhone 4 so I missed a generation and it put me into the "s" cycle. I'm going to do one of two things:

When the 6 comes out if it has NFC and wireless charging I'm all over it. I'll switch carriers if its cheaper.

When the 6 comes out and it doesn't have these things I'll hold out until the iPhone 7 and skip the 6s, assuming there is one. (Or switch to Android if the 7 doesn't have NFC and wireless charging).

 

[mKTank]

Not sure... Kinda bummed that I'm on the "s" cycle and not the other way around, because I owned the original iPhone. I feel almost punished for being an early adopter...

Why, if anything, you're buying the right devices.

Every phone that isn't on the S cycle has failed in at least one department, and the S variant of it is always the fixed one. The non-S phones then seem like a bit of a beta series to me.

IPhone 3G - slow as hell
IPhone 4 - terrible antenna issues
IPhone 5 - scratchfest 2013

IPhone 3GS - faster, what the 3G should have been
IPhone 4S - fixed antenna, what the 4 should have been
IPhone 5S - well we'll see but hopefully Apple learned from their mistake.

 

[Xenomorph]

Why, if anything, you're buying the right devices.

Every phone that isn't on the S cycle has failed in at least one department, and the S variant of it is always the fixed one. The non-S phones then seem like a bit of a beta series to me.

IPhone 3G - slow as hell
IPhone 4 - terrible antenna issues
IPhone 5 - scratchfest 2013

IPhone 3GS - faster, what the 3G should have been
IPhone 4S - fixed antenna, what the 4 should have been
IPhone 5S - well we'll see but hopefully Apple learned from their mistake.

Exactly! The "S" lines are the improved/perfected versions.

Also, if you check out the CPU performance chart that Apple showed off during the iPhone 5S event, you will see that the greatest performance bumps came with all the "S" releases. 3GS, 4S, 5S. That is a pretty big deal.

 

[mKTank]

Also they lied slightly when they said the 4 gave better graphics performance than the 3GS.

The 4 was actually a bit worse due to the (at the time) massive resolution. Confirmed by a lot of benchmarks.

 

[Skilbo1023]

Alongside this question we could think about why Apple chose the naming for the phone. The first was called the iPhone, retrospectively the iPhone original/2G. The next was called the 3G, because it was able to connect to the 3G network (unlike the 2G). Then Apple changed it's naming to number order and has ever since. I guess you could claim the original iPhone took both the 1st and 2nd iterations because it is know under both names.

Then if you looked at iPads Apple have used number orders from the 1st gen.

I wonder why? Thoughts?

Perhaps I should just go to bed and stop asking questions with no answers.....

Something I found on my travels around the web:

The 2G refers to the edge network that the original iphone worked on.

The reason they changed the form factor was in order to add the 3G capability and the GPS they had to 1. Increase the battery size (that's why in the middle the 3G/3GS is actually thicker than the original iphone) and 2.the antennas on the 3G/3GS unlike the iPhone4 were still on the inside and needed a plastic shell to not block the signals.

-Scott

 

[tymaster50]

white iPhone so no scratch issues lmfao

I didn't have an antenna problem with the 4 (got it in 2011)

 

[S.B.G]

Not sure... Kinda bummed that I'm on the "s" cycle and not the other way around, because I owned the original iPhone. I feel almost punished for being an early adopter...

I'm on the 's' cycle too, but I feel like it's the better one. Better because now that each design gets two cycles, I am getting a more refined version of the two.

Remember the iPhone 4 antenna problems? I never had that because I went from the 3GS to the 4S.

 

[boomhower]

My guess is cost. The first gen was sky high in price, even by Apple standards.