Apple and the Iconic iPhone Design

In 2007, Apple threw the cell phone market on its head with the release of the iPhone. Apple had already
made headway with the release of the iPod in 2001, and the iPhone in many ways was the evolution of that
design but taken several steps further. It normalized the idea of the touchscreen, virtual keyboard, music
player, web browsing capability, and email access all being rolled into one device.
It had heavy competition from the Blackberry, however, which was still the top-selling device around the
same time. The Blackberry did not adopt all of the same features as the iPhone, but it did normalize texting
and mobile devices keeping you connected to the internet and email. In fact, without the Blackberry’s full
keyboard in conjunction with mobile networks, texting would probably not be what it is today.
Shifting Features of Cell Phones and the Smartphone Revolution
Phones began to incorporate more features prior to the iPhone, but even with the implementation of
cameras and texting, it is still safe to say that the cell phone’s primary use was communication, the cell
phone would shift to become a mobile computer, the type that we all now know today.
Apple introduced the App Store in 2008. This storefront, designed to open up new access points on our cell
phones, was a major step towards turning the cell phone into a multimedia device. Developers could create
special programs designed to take advantage of the features of a mobile device.
Android and the Competition With Apple was not used in the first smartphone until a number of years later
after Google had acquired the company that created it. The HTC Dream, also known as the T-Mobile G1 in
the United States, was the first smartphone to have Android as its operating system.
Of course, Android was important for being an open operating system. Other operating systems, like the
iPhone OS and the Blackberry OS, were unable to be modified by users easily. Android was based on the
Linux platform, a well-known open-source operating system. The platform itself was well received for this
fact alone.
However, while the HTC Dream was a well-received phone, did not yet take the phone market by storm.
While the Google integrations were a big benefit because of the rising prominence of Google services, the
platform was missing a number of convenient features introduced by Apple and others. But Android would
soon come to be a standard operating system for any non-Apple phone.
Samsung introduced the Galaxy phone in 2010. The Galaxy was one of the first competitors to take hold of
the phone market against aside from the Blackberry line of phones that still managed to keep a large
market share (thanks to their focus on ease of typing and texting). Most competitors failed to truly take hold
against Apple’s giant presence.
For example, Microsoft had its Lumia phone. This was an attempt by another tech giant to introduce not
only a new smartphone but also provide people with the well known Windows operating system on a mobile
device. Unfortunately, the devices did not take off as Microsoft hoped, and in 2017, after six years of
production, Microsoft decided to drop its mobile telephone line and focus on laptops and tablets.