Apple iPhone is 16 today, and a long way from when Steve Jobs unveiled it

The journey began in 2007 as an iPod that had touch controls, a phone and internet

It has been 16 years since Apple released its first smartphone, the iPhone. On this day in 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage to unveil a device that was an iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and an internet device.

It has since been an onward and upward journey for Apple with the iPhone remaining an aspirational smartphone for enthusiasts.

Going back in time, the first iPhone never made it to India – at least officially. Though if you were lucky, you could find it in Delhi’s famed and resourceful electronics grey market, the Gaffar Market.

It was the iPhone 3G, rolled out across the globe in July 2008, which debuted the Apple smartphone line in India. It was a smartphone with support for 3G network for enhanced data speeds and built-in store for apps.

Though there were just 500 apps at the launch, the App Store changed the iPhone dynamics in terms of functionality. It made the iPhone synonymous with smartphones. Later, the phone was succeeded by the iPhone 3GS.

Apple kept updating the iPhone line every year, but it was not until 2013 that the major upgrades arrived.

The iPhone 5s introduced Touch ID, a new way to unlock the smartphone using a fingerprint scanner embedded on the home button. Apple was not the first to adopt fingerprint-based biometric unlock mechanism. That honour goes to Motorola in 2011. But Apple’s implementation was by far the best.

The next big changes came in 2017 with the iPhone X, Apple's tenth anniversary special smartphone. It had a bezel-less design with the screen covering the entire front, but had a notch on the top side to accommodate a complex camera system.

It is this iPhone that introduced a facial recognition system called Face ID, which remains the biometric phone unlock mechanism on the iPhones to date.

Speaking of notch, the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro series introduced Dynamic Island that not only trimmed the notch area but also made it interactive.

On the way to what the iPhone is today, Apple took some controversial decisions, too.

It removed the 3.5mm audio jack in 2016 with the introduction of iPhone 7. And in 2020, the company removed the charging adapter from the box with the release of the iPhone 12 series.

Later this year, Apple is likely to refresh the iPhone line with 2023 models.

The most radical change this year would be the shift from Apple's proprietary lightning connection to USB-C for charging and data transfer, thanks to the European Union directive.

In India, Apple is doubling down its efforts to make the country its major manufacturing hub after China. From April to December 2022, the company exported more than $2.5 billion iPhones from India. This is twice the previous fiscal year’s total, according to a news report in Bloomberg.

Another Bloomberg report says the Tata Group is in talks with Taiwan-based Taipei’s Wistron Corp, one of Apple's biggest vendors in India, to buy its manufacturing unit in Karnataka, some 50 km from Bengaluru. If the deal goes through, it will give India its first home-grown iPhone-maker.

Apple bites

• iPhone (2007-2008)
• iPhone 3G (2008-2010)
• iPhone 3GS (2009-2012)
• iPhone 4 (2010-2013)
• iPhone 4s (2011-2014)
• iPhone 5 (2012-2013)
• iPhone 5C (2013-2015)
• iPhone 5S (2013-2016)
• iPhone 6 (2014-2016)
• iPhone 6 Plus (2014-2016)
• iPhone 6s (2015-2018)
• iPhone 6S Plus (2015-2018)
• iPhone SE (1st) (2016-2018)
• iPhone 7 (2016-2019)
• iPhone 7 Plus (2016-2019)
• iPhone 8 (2017-2020)
• iPhone 8 Plus (2017-2020)
• iPhone X (2017-2018)
• iPhone XS (2018-2019)
• iPhone XS Max (2018-2019)
• iPhone XR (2018-2021)
• iPhone 11 Pro (2019-2020)
• iPhone 11 Pro Max (2019-2020)
• iPhone SE, 2nd (2020-2022)
• iPhone 12 series (2020-2021)
• iPhone 13 series (2021-2022)
• iPhone 14 series (2022 – 2023)