iPhone - A Smartphone by Apple Inc.

The iPhone  is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system. The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007; the most recent iPhones, the seventh-generation iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, were introduced on September 10, 2013.

The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and can connect to many different cellular networks, including 1xRTT and GPRS (shown as a circle on the status bar), EDGE (shown as a capital E on the status bar), UMTS and EV-DO (shown as 3G), a faster version of UMTS and 4G (shown as a 4G symbol on the status bar), and LTE (shown as LTE on the status bar)^. An iPhone can shoot video (though this was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS), take photos, play music, send and receive email, browse the web, send texts, GPS navigation, tell jokes, record notes, do mathematical calculations, and receive visual voicemail. Other functions — video games, reference works, social networking, etc. — can be enabled by downloading application programs (‘apps’); as of October 2013, the App Store offered more than one million apps by Apple and third parties^.

History and availability

Development of what was to become the iPhone began in 2004, when Apple started to gather a team of 1000 employees to work on the highly confidential "Project Purple", including Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs steered the original focus away from a tablet, like the iPad, and towards a phone. Apple created the device during a secretive collaboration with AT&T Mobility—Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months.


Apple rejected the "design by committee" approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessfu^l collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house and even paid Apple a fraction of its monthly service revenue (until the iPhone 3G), in exchange for four years of exclusive US sales, until 2011.

Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007, at the Macworld 2007 convention at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The two initial models, a 4 GB model priced at US$ 499 and an 8 GB model at US$ 599, went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007, at 6:00 pm local time, while hundreds of customers lined up outside the stores nationwide. The passionate reaction to the launch of the iPhone resulted in sections of the media dubbing it the 'Jesus phone'. Following this successful release in the US, the first generation iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in the spring of 2008.

On July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries, including the original six. Apple released the iPhone 3G in upwards of eighty countries and territories. Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on June 8, 2009, along with plans to release it later in June, July, and August, starting with the US, Canada and major European countries on June 19. Many would-be users objected to the iPhone's cost, and 40% of users have household incomes over US$100,000.
The back of the original first generation iPhone was made of aluminum with a black plastic accent. The iPhone 3G and 3GS feature a full plastic back to increase the strength of the GSM signal. The iPhone 3G was available in an 8 GB black model, or a black or white option for the 16 GB model. The iPhone 3GS was available in both colors, regardless of storage capacity.
The iPhone 4 has an aluminosilicate glass front and back with a stainless steel edge that serves as the antennas. It was at first available in black; the white version was announced, but not released until April 2011, 10 months later.

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