Mobile phone and iPod at the same time? This is what the first iPhone could have been

Many years after the release of the iPhone 2G, there is too much interesting news. All this on the eve of WWDC 2022 and a few months before the presentation of the iPhone 14. Coincidence? I don’t think.

In fact, the amount of details about the history of the iPhone is really amazing: not so long ago it became known that Apple could have created a frameless iPod as much as 15 years before the release of the iPhone X.

Now Tony Fadell has revealed that the iPhone 2G could have been completely different! You have no idea what Apple wanted to release. True, everything went very differently. However, let’s go in order.

What did the first iPhone look like?

Many rightly consider the Motorola ROKR E1 to be the first phone from Apple , and rightly so: it was created in collaboration with Motorola, although it turned out to be a failure.

Apple’s first full-fledged smartphone was the iPhone 2G, but it could have looked completely different. Tony Fadell – one of the creators of the iPod, pours interesting memories for the second week.

In his Twitter, he published interesting news: in the garage he found a prototype of the first iPhone , which utterly resembles an iPod and a mobile phone at the same time! Yes, how is that possible?

This is what the first iPhone might have looked like, if not for the opinion of Steve Jobs

It’s very simple: until 2007, the company did not have its own mobile device, except for the iPod. Apple actively researched the market, and engineers did not waste time experimenting with the appearance of the future phone.

The base was an iPod with a camera and a spinning keyboard! On the one hand, there were buttons, and, judging by the photographs, they were touch-sensitive, on the other, there was the familiar Click Wheel playback control joystick.

It is important to note that the prototype was created by a third-party manufacturer, and this technology has not disappeared – it is likely that the technology of the hinge inside was useful in creating the Nokia 5700 music phone, which was released in 2007 and turned out to be a real bomb, falling in love with users.

Unusual iPhone design

Surprisingly, the iPhone 2G could have been called something else: Fadell said the device could have been called the iPod Plus iPhone or the iPod iPhone.

True, he himself admitted that such an idea does not work, although it looks good. The Click Wheel itself could be useful not only for controlling the player: with it, you could select menu items, phone numbers, and even dial a subscriber like on a rotary phone.

Basically, it was an iPod Classic with a phone inside. But the idea of ​​​​a secret project was cut down by Steve Jobs: he considered that the already iconic iPod should not be crossed with a mobile phone, calling the concept reckless.

As a result, the head of Apple decided that everything should be much simpler.

However, work on the iPod Plus iPhone continued: the developers tried to adapt the Click Wheel for data entry, but nothing worked. Jobs said that you need to work on and try, but at some point the team gave up and admitted failure.

Despite this, the work was not in vain: Fadell says that the iPod crossed with the iPhone was one of three concepts for the future smartphone and greatly helped in the creation of Apple’s first smartphone.

What is multi touch

So, it was decided to make the Click Wheel virtual by using a touch screen with MultiTouch in a future device. Fadell says that one of the startups bought by Apple was developing a new technology.

True, the multi-touch screen that the local engineers created was the size of a ping-pong table. The developers had to work very hard to reduce it and squeeze it into a small device, while maintaining the functionality of the screen.

In addition, it was important to make friends between the iPhone hardware and the virtual stuffing so that everything worked perfectly.

iPhone 2G has changed, but now we know the whole truth

And Steve Jobs ordered that there should be no glass in the iPhone . But after the presentation, something went wrong and the Apple boss changed his mind: he noted that the iPhone has problems with rigidity and control mechanics, so the smartphone needs glass.

Given that the developments for plastic elements were very different, the engineers again had to sweat: within two months they had to shovel the device again, including antennas, in order for everything to work correctly.

So, when holding an iPhone, remember that things could have been completely different: perhaps we would have been walking around with mobile phones and using physical keyboards for a long time.

In any case, we must once again thank Steve Jobs for his perfectionism, and Apple engineers for perseverance and hard work.

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