back to article Apple iPhone turns five this Friday

The iPhone first went on sale five years ago this week and it has already clocked up more than $150 billion in revenues - more than the annual GDP of Hungary - for Apple. More than 250 million iPhones have been sold since 29 June 2007, the day over-the-counter sales began in the US, almost six months after its January 2007 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    5 years old, looks like 10 and the UI totally 1980's.

    In 5 years it has easily been outclassed, but the faithful hang on, like grannys at a bingo hall.

    And those well off still think that its a status symbol. How wrong people can be eh?

    1. uhuznaa

      Don't know of the "status symbol" thing, but the iPhone is just very well known. No Android phone of the day (or half year) can ever get to this "status" thing because it just has no time to establish it.

      And to be honest: Just blindly going for the iPhone for most people means they will get a decent smartphone which does what most people want to do with a smartphone in a very straightforward way, while going blindly for a random Android phone easily leads to being stuck with a dud.

      At any given point in time there may be one or two Android phones that are "better" for some very specific needs than the iPhone, but there are also hundreds of them that are much worse, never get any update, or any third-party attention, and vanish down the slope of the history pile three months later. This then is the opposite of a "status symbol" and just says "I was too silly and lazy to inform myself and also too cheap/proud to just get an iPhone".

    2. Ivan Headache
      FAIL

      5 years old, looks like 10 and the UI totally 1980's.

      I'm sure I must have seen a phone with an interface like back in the eighties.

      Nope it was a tiny screen that showed in barely legible numbers the call you were trying to make after pressing huge buttons and extracting the aerial from up your nose.

      You've been putting too much googledust up yours.

    3. Doogie1

      @Obviously!

      It's not just the faithful who hang on, you're obviously obsessed ( obsessed obviously!)

  2. uhuznaa

    What's most amazing

    is the fact that the iPhone and especially iOS have hardly changed at all in these years. OK, it got some badly needed things (copy&paste, third-party apps), but many stock apps and iOS itself are still almost the same five years later. I'm not sure if this just means that Apple got it just right back then or if Apple is falling back, or a bit of both. Probably the latter...

    1. Henry Blackman

      Re: What's most amazing

      It's changed quite a bit, and iOS 6 updates it again. Granted some of it is just better graphics, and updated UI, but why change something that works as perfectly and as well as it did 5 years ago?

      Apple got this so right, they don't need to change many things. They may not lead on specs all of the time, but they do lead with the things that matter, like that retina display, battery life, ease of use.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google only did Android to compete - without the iPhone we would probably still be using Nokia 63xx and a N95 would be considered a high end phone! Thanks Apple.

  4. Toothpick
    Stop

    I wondered .......

    When Obviously! would be along with his/her usual "UI looks like an 80s wallpaper". Any time there is an article about the iPhone you post the same garbage. Give it a rest eh?

  5. t8t
    Meh

    First wifi?

    Nokia 9500 communicator had wifi in 2004...

  6. Paul Kerton
    Facepalm

    MMS???

    I have never been able to understand why people find the lack of MMS a deal breaker. I mean, you have a phone in your hand that is capable of email, and photos are readily attached to these - along with the cost saving for each MMS you're not sending...

    So my question is - why MMS when there's email?

    1. dboy

      Re: MMS???

      Because at the time not everyone had a phone which would receive email, but almost all mid to high end phones could receive mms. Also mms is pushed to the device, for most email is polled, which is why even now people use messaging (SMS, whatsapp, imessage...) as it is more instant

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: MMS???

        People now still have phones that either don't do email or they haven't configured it or don't know how to, or that they can.

        MMS is still a viable option now.

  7. Armando 123

    Definitely a game-changer

    The Keynote where Jobs introduced the iPhone is on youtube (can't be bothered to post the URL, but I know y'all have Mad Surcheen Skillz, as eny ful kno).

    Watching it now is interesting; it's hard to remember just how BAD the existing smartphones were at the time. I'd had a Blackberry for work and all I wanted from my phone was to make and take calls. This was a pain in the gluteus as phones of the day got 'smarter'. But with the iPhone debut, you could tell Apple had figured out a lot of things and they "got it". Nowadays it seems commonplace and boring in some ways, but that may just be an indication of just how well they did.

    The original iPhone wasn't perfect -- nothing is -- but boy was it a leap.

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