Today marks 16 years since Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, California on January 9th to introduce the iPhone to the world for the first time.
Jobs stood on stage at the Macworld Expo and delivered words that would go down in history as the introduction of a device that would change everything. “Today, Apple reinvents the telephone,” Jobs said, unveiling the iPhone, which at the time was distinguished by its futuristic design, multi-touch display without a physical keyboard, and iPhoneOS, a proper mobile operating system.
Jobs famously described the iPhone as an iPod touch, a telephone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device, three distinct areas that no device at the time could handle at once. The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch LCD display, a 2-megapixel camera, and an aluminum and plastic body.
Every year since the original iPhone, Apple has been constantly updating it with new features and capabilities. The first major iPhone redesign came with the iPhone 4 in 2010, three years after the original iPhone was introduced. The iPhone 4 marked a turning point in the history of the iPhone, featuring an all-new flat-edge design, all-new Retina display, A4 processor, 5-megapixel camera, LED flash, and more.
Two years later, the iPhone 5 marked another redesign for the iPhone, making it taller with a larger Retina display, an A6 chip, a slim design that made it the “world’s thinnest smartphone” at the time, a new 8-megapixel iSight camera, and more.
In the following years, Apple would introduce several innovations that endure to this day, such as Touch ID and Face ID, advanced cameras, superior smartphone performance and battery life, sleek design, and a tightly integrated ecosystem of devices. .
Fast forward to today, the iPhone line has five different models: iPhone SE, iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. Today’s iPhones include features unthinkable in the days of the original iPhone, including a full-screen display without a Home button and thin bezels, facial recognition, 4K video recording, a 48MP camera, Dynamic Island, a higher refresh rate display, and all the features and capabilities of iOS 16.
