The iPhone at Age 10 (Which is Roughly 60 in Dog Years)

original iPhone and birthday cake for 10th anniversary

Dr. Mac’s Rants & Raves
Episode #234

The iPhone celebrated its 10th birthday last week (that’s around 60 in dog years for those who care). So, let’s take a brief look back upon each of the 14 iPhone models we’ve seen so far and the new features it introduced.

But, before we begin, here’s an interesting statistic:

I searched my Dr. Mac’s Rants & Raves Columns folder from 2007 to present and discovered that I’ve mentioned the iPhone in 442 of the 650 files, or roughly 65% of all my columns since 2007.

original iPhone and birthday cake for 10th anniversary
10 years of iPhones

Perhaps it’s time to change my moniker from Dr. Mac to something like Dr. Apple Stuff or Dr. iDevices & Macs?

Or not.

The Ten Year History of the iPhone

Moving right along, here are ship dates and significant new features for each iPhone model shipped to so far:

  • June 29, 2007: iPhone ships with iPhone OS 1.0, a web browser, an email client, a Maps app powered by Google Maps, Visual Voicemail, an onscreen keyboard, and many other firsts for a mobile phone.
  • July 11, 2008: iPhone 3G ships with iPhone OS 2.0, the App Store, and third-party apps.
  • June 19, 2009: iPhone 3G S ships with iPhone OS 3, video recording, a higher-resolution (3 megapixel) rear camera, and speed. As Phil Schiller put it during the product announcement, “the ‘S’ in ‘3G S’ is for ‘speed.”
  • June 24, 2010: iPhone 4 ships with iOS 4.0 (note the name change from “iPhone OS”), the first Apple-produced A4 system-on-a-chip processor, higher-resolution Retina Display, front-facing camera, and FaceTime app (for video chatting).
  • October 14, 2011: iPhone 4S (later changed to 4s) ships with iOS 5.0, Siri, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and 1080p video recording.
  • September 21, 2012: iPhone 5 ships with iOS 6, a bigger screen, and a Lightning port replacing the 30-pin Dock Connector port.
  • September 20, 2013: iPhone 5S ships with iOS 7, the first 64-bit processor (A7), the first motion coprocessor (M7), Touch ID, AirDrop, and Control Center.
  • September 20, 2013: iPhone 5C ships with iOS 7, an A6 processor, polycarbonate exteriors available in six colors, and not much else.
  • September 19, 2014: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus ship with iOS 8 and Apple Pay, plus 4K video recording, and optical video image stabilization on the 6 Plus.
  • September 25, 2015: iPhone 6s and 6s Plus shipped with iOS 9, haptic feedback, and 3D Touch.
  • March 31, 2016: iPhone SE ships with iOS 9 and not much else that’s new.
  • September 16, 2016: iPhone 7 and 7 Plus ship with iOS 10, no headphone jack, the first quad-coresystem-on-chip (A10 Fusion), upgraded 12-megapixel rear-facing cameras with optical image stabilization on both models, plus second (telephoto) lens and Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus.

The Bottom Line

The iPhone had an impressive first decade and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

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