The iPhone’s Evolution: Discovering How the Original Device Operated Without an App Store

January 9 marked 16 years since the announcement of the original iPhone, the device that changed everything. Back then, the iPhone presented by Steve Jobs was a far cry from what we have in hand today. However, it would serve to lay the foundations for today’s smartphones.

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Jobs presented the invention during the Macworld Conference & Expo and defined it as the fusion of the iPod with a cell phone and Internet access, all controlled through a striking touch screen. The iPhone would go on sale on June 29th of that same year and the rest is history.

A smartphone “capable of everything

However, the iPhone could still be a bit short on specs, even for the time. The smartphone was sold with a silver finish and black front, with no color options as we have today. Its screen was only 3.5 inches and its only 2-megapixel camera did not even allow video recording. On the inside, it included 4 GB of storage, a 412 MHz Samsung ARM 1176 processor and 128 MB of RAM.

No, it wasn’t a beast, but consumers weren’t attracted by the power, but rather by its versatility and the possibilities it promised. It was priced at $499 (about 466 euros) and its box included an instruction manual, USB cable, headphones and a dock with a 30-pin connector. In that sense, we can affirm that it is a step ahead of today’s manufacturers (including Apple).

The original iPhone already incorporated some functions such as YouTube videos, a GPS very similar to what we see today in Apple Maps or Google Maps, application to check the weather, calculator, notes … No doubt, it was a fairly complete device.

At that time, Apple managed to sell one million units of the iPhone just 5 days after its launch.

The original iPhone did not include the App Store

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On the other hand, there was one thing the original iPhone did not include: the famous App Store. The Apple smartphone came with iPhone OS 1.0 installed, the first known official version of iOS. However, we would have to wait for iPhone OS 2.0 before we could install apps on the device. Prior to the update, Apple released an SDK on March 6, 2008 to allow developers to create applications for the iPhone.

Along with the release of the next generation iPhone and iPod Touch (the iPhone 3G and the second generation iPod touch), we would finally get iPhone OS 2.0, an update that could also be installed on the first iPhone. In the case of the first generation iPod touch, Apple was asking $9.95 for the update (thank goodness that trend did not continue later).

The first App Store offered about 500 applications at the time of its release, a very high number. Within that early App Store we could already find applications and games that would make history, such as Angry Birds or WhatsApp, for example.

And you, were you one of those who bought an original iPhone at the time?