IPhone | Models, iPhone 17, iPhone Air, Definition, History, & Facts

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iPhone, series of smartphones produced by Apple Inc., combining mobile telephone, digital camera, music player, and personal computing technologies. After more than two years of development, the device was first released in the United States in 2007. The iPhone was subsequently released in Europe in 2007 and Asia in 2008.

Apple designed its first mobile smartphone to run the Mac OS X operating system, made popular on the company’s personal computers. The device’s most revolutionary element was its touch-sensitive multisensor interface. The touchscreen allowed users to manipulate all programs and telephone functions with their fingertips rather than a stylus or physical keys. This interface—perfected, if not invented, by Apple—recreated a tactile physical experience; for example, the user could shrink photos with a pinching motion or flip through music albums using a flicking motion. The iPhone also featured Internet browsing, music and video playback, a digital camera, visual voicemail, and a tabbed contact list.

The iPhone joined several competing products in the smartphone market, and critics and fans alike noted that it offered few truly original features. The main appeal of the iPhone was its incorporation of intuitive software and a simplified appealing interface, as well as the capacity to accommodate new user-selected software. More than 100 million applications (or “apps”) were downloaded in the first 60 days after Apple opened its online iPhone App Store in 2008, and by January 2010 more than three billion apps had been downloaded from the store.

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The Dating Game: Which Came First?

In 2008, only a year after its debut, Apple released a second version of the iPhone that was updated to use third-generation (3G) wireless technology. As with the original iPhone, demand was high, and the new iPhone 3G sold one million units in the first three days after…

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