STEVE JOBS INTRODUCES THE ORIGINAL IPHONE IN 2007

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the first iPhone, that was introduced by Steve Jobs, on a day like today in 2007.

The iPhone, retroactively referred to as the iPhone 2G or iPhone 1, is the first iPhone model and the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. 

After years of rumours and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Development of the iPhone began in 2005 and continued in complete secrecy until its public unveiling at Macworld 2007. The device broke with prevailing mobile phone designs by eliminating most physical hardware buttons and eschewing a stylus for its finger-friendly touch interface.

The iPhone instead featured only a few physical buttons and a touch screen. It featured quad-band GSM cellular connectivity with GPRS and EDGE support for data transfer, and it used continuous internet access and onboard processing to support features unrelated to voice communication. Its successor, the iPhone 3G, was announced on June 9, 2008.

The iPhone quickly became Apple's most successful product, with later generations propelling it to become one of the world's most profitable companies. The introduction of the App Store allowed established companies and startup developers to build careers and earn money, via the platform, while providing consumers with new ways to access information and connect with other people. The iPhone largely appealed to the general public, as opposed to the business community BlackBerry and IBM focused on at the time. By integrating existing technology and expanding on usability, the iPhone turned the smartphone industry on its head.

In 2000, Apple CEO Steve Jobs envisioned an Apple touchscreen product that the user could interact with directly with their fingers rather than using a stylus. The stylus was a common tool for many existing touchscreen devices at the time including Apple's own Newton, launched in 1993. He decided that the device would require a triple layered capacitive multi-touch touch screen, a very new and advanced technology at the time. This helped with removing the physical keyboard and mouse. The same as was common at the time for tablet computers, human machine interfaces, and point of sale systems.

Jobs recruited a group of Apple engineers to investigate the idea as a side project. When Jobs reviewed the prototype and its user interface, he saw the potential in developing the concept into a mobile phone to compete with already established brands in the then emerging market for touch screen phones. The whole effort was called Project Purple 2 and began in 2005. Apple purchased the iphone.org domain in December 1999.

Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with Cingular Wireless, now part of AT&T. The development cost of the collaboration was estimated to have been $150 million over a thirty-month period. Apple rejected the design by committee approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular Wireless gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house.

The original iPhone was introduced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, in a keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo held in Moscone West in San Francisco, California. 

In his address, Jobs said, This is a day that I have been looking forward to for two and a half years, and that today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communicator.

Six weeks prior to the iPhone's release, the plastic screen was replaced with glass. This was after Jobs was upset when he saw that his keys scratched the prototype in his pocket. The quick switch led to a bidding process for a manufacturing contractor that was won by Foxconn, which had just opened up a new wing of its Shenzhen factory complex specifically for this bid.

The original iPhone received largely positive reviews.

More information: Seamgen

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator...
these are NOT three separate devices!
And we are calling it iPhone!
Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
And here it is.

Steve Jobs