What the iPhone Means to Me

And why I briefly flirted with ‘the dark side’

The iPhone turned 15 yesterday.

How nuts is that?

I was 26 when the first iPhone hit the shelves and I wanted one, badly. Alas, it was way beyond my budget. This was, clearly, something for those with lots of disposable income.

Back then, smartphones were still very experimental. They were chunky, clunky, and suffered from dreadful battery life. Owning a ‘normal’ phone was therefore far more desirable, hence the continued success of devices like the Motorola Razr.

But the iPhone was so desirable — aspirational, even. Clearly, Apple had hit on something — they’d made a smartphone that looked like it had real potential.

My iPhone journey isn’t particularly unique, but it does reveal what this little device means to me.

I told my Discord crew last night that my first iPhone was the 3G. It wasn’t — I’ve just realised that it was, in fact, the iPhone 3GS.

Prior to that, I had treated myself to an iPod touch, which was essentially an iPhone without the phone bit included. It was my gateway to actually being an iPhone owner. But it still wasn’t an iPhone, and finally getting my hands on the latter was quite an experience.

I vividly remember sitting in a pub somewhere with the iPhone 3GS nestled in my pocket. I’ve actually got an iPhone, I thought. That thing in my pocket isn’t an iPod touch — I can actually use it to text and ring people. It’s an iPhone.

I have very little memory of actually using the iPhone 3GS (this is no slight on the device itself — my memory is just dreadful), but I do remember thinking that I’d never need to own any other kind of phone ever again.

That’s what the iPhone did when you first got your hands on it back then. Suddenly, everything made sense. The absence of a physical keyboard and the presence of an operating…

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