Ten years ago Apple completely transformed the tech landscape with the enlargement of a single product, the iPhone.
It was expensive, it was different.
I still have my iPhone from 2007 and it still works.
Well it still turns on, at least.
Ten years later, what does it feel like next to the iPhone 7 plus I've been using them both side by side.
It's amazing the iPhone still feels the same mostly.
I mean there's a home button a touchscreen volume buttons.
But everything else is really different.
It feels ridiculously tiny more like an iPod.
Its round slightly chunky aluminum design actually feels more like the Apple watch than the super thin iPhone 7.
The original iPhone only connected to AT&T's Edge network for speeds slower than 3G.
My current SIM card wouldn't work even with an adapter but I could connect over WiFi.
Even that's a lot slower than anything possible on LTE now.
There's no GPS, no front facing camera and the rear camera doesn't even have flash.
The 3.5 inch screen is functional, and it's not bad for ten years ago, but it's terrible compared to crisper, brighter screens now.
But that original iPhone, it's a great music player if you load MP3 on.
It's not able to stream to popular apps, or really load any apps anymore.
The app store which came later is on this iPhone with IOS 3, but I can't download any apps to it anymore.
Pandora, one of the few music streaming apps on the iPhone that I still have doesn't play if I leave the app.
Background streaming came later.
Photos look really muddy, but I can still upload one to Facebook if I have the patience.
I can surf the web, Google Maps Still works.
The iPhone's core idea is still the same.
But now the iPhone is about connecting to everything.
Notifications, Bluetooth, messages, videos, photos, tons of games.
Plants versus zombies was the best it got back in the old days.
But in 2007 there weren't any games.
The iPhone was a Mac-connected iPod with phone service.
Where will the iPhone be in another ten years?
Maybe it will be invisible, absorbed into other gadgets.
Maybe it will be the hub to everything.
But it will be hard to reinvent something as singular as that first iPhone.
I wouldn't rock the old one anymore, though.
Goodbye, old sticker-covered pal.
