One of my original iPhone 2G devices
The iPhone Turns 6 Today!
It was six years ago today that Steve Jobs announced “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
The original iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007 after months of the standard Apple rumors and speculation. Click here for a video of Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone at Macworld six years ago.
The iPhone didn’t reach stores for another six months, hitting the streets here in the U.S. on June 29, 2007. I didn’t get mine until about a year later, right after the iPhone 3G was announced in June of 2008. Until then, I was devout a two device BlackBerry and Palm guy.
The original iPhone 2G came with a 2MP camera. It was a fixed focus camera with fairly poor light sensitivity by today’s standards. Although the images were often muddy making Dynamic Range Correction apps like Perfectly Clear a necessity, it still created brighter, more vibrant color images than many other mobile phones of the time. To me, the original iPhone 2G camera had unique color and tonal qualities — almost a digital lo-fi like a Holga, Diana or other LOMO camera and it’s how Life In LoFi got its name. It’s because of the 2G’s camera that I started this blog. In many ways, it was a life changer.
I still have one of our original iPhone 2G devices. It still works great even though I haven’t used it as a phone in years. I can still shoot with some classic photo apps including Polarize. Hipstamatic plus the 2G’s noise, low ISO and relatively small dynamic range creates some outstanding digital lo-fi photos that have yet to be duplicated with any subsequent iPhone.
Smartphones would have eventually changed photography no matter what. If you had one, it was a camera that was always with you (trust me… always). I also think the opening of the App Store and the success of early photo apps — allowing users to not only tweak and correct photos but to quickly and easily add a number of effects drastically — changed not only that we shoot, but how we expect it to look.
Before my original iPhone, I shot mostly with a Fuji FinePix DSLR. Since getting my first iPhone and especially with the subsequent improvements in the iPhone camera over the years, I shoot pretty much exclusively with my iPhone 5 now.
Thanks, Steve, for changing the world again. Happy Birthday, iPhone.
=M=
Got your own iPhone story or birthday tribute? Share it below in the comments!
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