The First Smartphone

Every once in a while a revolutionary device comes out that completely changes the world. Back in the early 2000s smartphones weren’t the mainstream. The smartphones that existed were small compact devices with physical keyboards on them. Companies such as BlackBerry and Motorola ruled the phone industry with their “smartphones.” However in 2007, Apple released their own smartphone simply called the iPhone. This smartphone was nothing like its predecessor, it was a phone with a nothing but a glass touch screen. A phone capable of not only phone calling, but also playing music, streaming videos, and accessing the internet the same way you would on a computer. This revolutionary device paved the way for other companies, such as Samsung, to make their own smartphones.

Booming Business

This whole new line of smartphones allowed many different companies and people to profit from it. After the launch of the iPhone many other companies started to make smartphones as well, Apple’s biggest rival being Samsung who’s smartphones used Google’s Android operating system. Soon after the surge of smartphones started a new feature created more business, Applications or Apps. One of the biggest impact of the iPhone was the introduction of the App Store, here many developers and companies released third-party apps to make the iPhone have other features. Following this Google created  the Google Play Store for Android smartphones. Today there is a whole business around developing apps for smartphones, a business that didn’t exist before. iPhone also introduced the idea of having the internet with you at all times, the same internet you can access on your computer, Apple’s new internet browser Safari allowed this to happen. This allowed people to access the full internet, the old smartphones has very limited internet capabilities. Wi-Fi became a common term as everyone who had a smartphone were trying to connect to wireless internet. This allowed many phone companies to start releasing new mobile plans with data that allowed smartphone users to access the internet without the need for Wi-Fi. The iPhone allowed many different businesses to grow due to the start of the smartphone industry.

Innovation and Change

Following the release of the first iPhone Apple has released multiple others. From the first iPhone released in 2007 all the way to the iPhone 7 released in 2016. Each phone containing new features and technology to make the phones operate faster and better. This year Apple has announced two new iPhones, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X (iPhone 10). The iPhone 8 is pretty much similar to the iPhone 7, however it contains wireless charging and an option for augmented virtual reality unlike the iPhone 7. The big hype is over the iPhone X, this is the first iPhone released my Apple that has a different look to it. For the iPhone X Apple got rid of the home button and added multiple cameras and sensors on the front of the phone. This ties in with the biggest feature of the new phone, face recognition. Now users can use their face as their password for their phone, they can even use their face to use Apple Pay to buy things online. The front facing cameras and sensors also help with another feature, Animojis. The sensors pick up more than 50 muscles movements on the users face to create fun animations with different animal emojis. The iPhone X also comes with dual 12 megapixel cameras to capture stunning pictures and record videos at 1080p at 60fps. Both the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X contain a brand new processing chip, the A11, making them over 30% faster than the iPhone 7. Both phones also come with Apple’s new IOS 11 operating system, which is also completely different than the previous IOS systems. At release the iPhone 8 will be from $699 to $799, and the iPhone X will be $999.

Apple has had a tremendous impact on the smartphone industry, they pioneered the first modern day smartphones. This allowed many businesses to form and allowed many other companies to become smartphone makers. With the release of the iPhone X Apple is changing the iPhone, hopefully for the better.