The Guardian, looking for comments on how the iPhone has changed the world, called it "a revolutionary concept on release". I suspect a lot of people can't remember what they were up to ten years ago, so let's take a look at where we were at that point.
In June 2007, the financial crisis was still three months away, with Northern Rock in the UK still afloat, not yet one of the first casualties to start the trend of state bailouts. And, if you believe the papers, we didn't have smartphones yet.
Except we did. By the time the first iPhone came out I was on my fourth or fifth smartphone, the first being the original O2 xda. The idea of browsing full web pages, navigating with GPS, listening to music, taking photos and checking your e-mail all from one device in your pocket was already more than familiar to me. While it's true that Android didn't yet exist, BlackBerry devices had long since gone from e-mail-only devices to fully-fledged devices with colour screens and cameras - and they were popular amongst young people (get off my lawn!) thanks to the free-to-use BlackBerry Messenger application. Nokia's latest flagship N95, although not a touchscreen phone, had a front camera, GPS with mapping, 3.5G data, a Webkit-based browser and the ability to install third-party applications, not to mention a focus on music functionality to rival the iPod. Meanwhile, a then unheard-of company called HTC had been quietly pumping out smartphones for a good five years already - and, arguably, set the trend that smartphones would end up focusing on the screen, not on looking like a phone, setting their devices apart from the likes of the Ericsson R380 from 2000, and the Nokia Communicator from 1996. But overall, Symbian devices from Nokia (and Sony Ericsson) ruled the roost - and Windows Mobile had a bigger market share than Windows Phone ever did. And manufacturers had even realised, between them, that touchscreen UIs should be made for thumbs and that capacitive touchscreens work best.
The first iPhone did not have GPS; nor did it have a front-facing camera or the ability to install third-party applications. Its screen resolution wasn't even close to the best in the market and it didn't even have 3G connectivity - it relied on an EDGE connection.
Eventually, the iPhone did catch up. The following year, the iPhone 3G was released, and iPhone OS 2.0 introduced support for third-party applications. Two years on from launch, you could at last connect your stereo Bluetooth headphones (although the music controls wouldn't work) and send picture messages. Three years on, the iPhone 4 added a front-facing camera (although, to be fair, in 2010 the selfie did not exist as a concept - the front camera was for video calling) and multi-tasking. And, despite Antennagate, in 2010 Apple finally had a device that was, on technical measures, on par with the competition.
Apple has been accused - rightly - of playing catch-up on more fronts. When Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, they were reacting to the rest of the market making phones with ever-bigger screens - the iPhone 5S was the same size as other manufacturers' "mini" smartphones. The iPhone 7 introduced water-resistance long after Sony's Xperia range mastered that art, and the 7 Plus's twin cameras only came after Huawei got to market first. The last few years have seen Apple accused of stagnating - and with good reason: aside from each generation delivering a faster processor, the last meaningful new functionality was the introduction of Touch ID in the iPhone 5S four years ago.
All of that makes it sound like the iPhone wasn't really anything new. And that's the thing: most generations of the iPhone have been evolutionary, not revolutionary. But the iPhone did do three things that made a big difference to the market - and they likely won't make headlines.
The first, and arguably greatest, success of the iPhone was the way it broke the carriers' stranglehold on phone firmware. Apple insisted that every carrier got the same iPhone. The networks had to do business Apple's way. Some networks were reticent at first, but this single move should not be underestimated. Previously, your phone wouldn't get updates (unless you hacked it) without the carrier approving the firmware update. And still today, Apple's support for older devices is streets ahead of the competition. Get an iPhone and you can expect to get OS updates for five years - 2012's iPhone 5 still runs the latest iOS.
The iPhone didn't invent the idea of downloading apps on to your phone, but the App Store changed the way people looked at apps. For users, there was suddenly a new world out there: the ability to install software without a cable and without trouble. For developers, a whole new way of earning money opened up: now they could sell small applications for small change, without having to worry about setting up an online shop or worry about distribution. Soon enough the App Store gained imitators: Android Market and, for Symbian, Ovi Store. And sure, you can argue this isn't revolutionary - it's just "iTunes, but for software", after all - but it changed the market.
Back in 2007 we weren't as worried about security or privacy as we are now. I remember taking part in many discussions with my colleagues where the overall conclusion was that Android was so much more open and flexible - you could do anything with it. As nerds, it's no surprise. But before long, security concerns did rear their ugly head. Apps on Android Market (which became the Google Play Store) asked for all kinds of crazy permissions up front, and you had two choices: accept them, or don't download the app. The iPhone makes apps ask for permission when they first want to use sensitive data, so individual apps won't get access to your contacts if you don't let them; your camera and microphone are off limits until you approve of their use. Android finally caught up with this in 2015.
With the iPhone, Apple was just doing what it has always known how to do: take ideas and technologies that already exist, and make them work a little bit better. And we should look at Apple's approach with the iPhone, too: the first iPhone was not really much of a smartphone. The iPhone has never made it possible to do anything that couldn't be done before, but by getting the basics right, and building incrementally over three years, they turned it into the example by which all others are judged. It will always be disputed whether each generation of iPhone is the best device of its year; and its influence will always be debated. But Apple's success in keeping their line of phones simple and homogeneous through the years - the polar opposite of Samsung's strategy of all possible devices for all possible users - has meant that it's the Apple product that always gets the headlines.
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