Same here. My mother had a blackberry until 2011 then she got an iPhone. My dad had a small Android cell phone with a scroll ball (idk the actual name) toward the bottom below the screen in 2010ish.
This tracks with my experience – people thought iPhones and social media were gimmicky and for hipsters and college students until they suddenly became ubiquitous and naturalized in 2011.
Old people skew the average. Most people you'd see in public had them by the end of 2011 i'd argue. At the very least, 2011 is when they became a common occurance.
Sent from my iPhone
For the first year or two, that is what most people remember. It was a bit of a novelty at first. For the rich and technologically adventurous.
I attended the wedding of some Apple obsessed friends (who had met while working at the Apple store) a few months after the iPhone came out and they did not even have it yet. Between the ceremony and reception they went to the Apple store to take pics and purchase… the latest Mac OS.
Blackberry users hated that it had no physical keyboard and were very hesitant to switch.
I vaguely remember something about how the first iPhone didn’t automatically pull emails while blackberry did, which was why offices still preferred blackberries as company-provided cellphones.
Yes! I was an office manager at a smallish company at the time and we had this one guy who immediately had to have an iPhone, while everyone was still on Blackberry. He paid for it himself and he was important enough, the IT guy had to fuck around with the Exchange server and Microsoft tech support to make it work just for him, lol.
They felt expensive and unnecessary for YEARS after they came out. "I only use my phone for texting and calls. Why do I need all this extra stuff?"
And we'd make fun of the people who seemed super attached and face down on their phones all the time.
A few years later and we'd all have one.
I feel like I was one of the last holdouts. Didn't replace my flip phone until 2012.
My parents were late holdouts too. They didn’t want to pay the extra money for it. They only used it for texts and calls so what’s the point. It started to become an issue in like 2012 and 2013 once all my friends in school were getting them and I really wanted one and they were like I’m not getting my middle schooler a better phone than me, but they refused to upgrade so I had some like 2006/2007 phone going into 2014. They finally bought in when my dad got an iPhone from his job and then downloaded a few games and realized how much better they were.
2007, I am sitting on a couch and listening about this concept of a cell phone. My cousin tells me it is from Apple, a touchscreen (without a stylus) and essentially a phone that can do everything. She starts naming its potential functions, and here I am so confused because I already had in my mind that the BlackBerry was the top of the line cell phone in the late 2000s. I didn't think for a minute that this phone would ever take off, and I was confused on why anyone would ever want one.
A few years later, I see some of my friends have the iPod Touch, very similar to the iPhone. I begin to take note of how revolutionary this "iPhone" could be if done correctly. The iPod touch was a real slick iPod, and I was able to borrow my friends devices to get a feel for the product.
Flashforward to 2011 and Apple releases the gamechanger iPhone 4S after the moderately successful iPhone 4. The 4 was the blueprint for the 4S, and that was the phone that killed off all the dumbphones. This was the phone that introduced iMessage, iCloud and Notification Center which have all become standard features. Android took off a year or two later as a competitor, "Droid" was how they were advertised.
2014 and almost everyone dumped their "dumbphone" for an iPhone or Android. iOS 7 is released and erases all the skeuomorphism. The IOS7 look, for the most part, has remained on all the OS releases since. Since then, it is difficult to find someone who doesn't know how to use the smartphone features in an instant. The iPhone 4S changed the cell phone game.
Take a look at this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/xmyy/apple\_iphone\_now\_real/](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/xmyy/apple_iphone_now_real/)
I remember doing an acting gig in the fall of '07 (so I would've been 15) with Rashida Jones, and she was the first person I'd met who had one. At one point she asked me to take a photo of her in costume and I was like, oh, this thing is really cool. I still had a Blackberry and would have one until 2011, though. They didn't really become super mainstream until that year and getting one was really exciting because then I could get Instagram, which had only been introduced the previous year.
I don't remember the release itself, but I remember the start of the first iPhone sales in my country and first advertisements of it. In that time, it seemed quite unusual, because many people had cell phones with buttons, and iPhone seemed like something for "rich people" or "elite". It had become more popular in my country since early 2010s.
My cousin had one of the early models. I’m gonna assume the 2nd Gen because unless he spent all his money he had saved up and shit there’s no way he afforded the first one. I was a little kid and just remember being blown away by what it could do.
I was 33 and walked into the Apple store in Plano, TX to look at it. I walked out with a the 4gb model. I thought it was the coolest thing ever at the time. Downsizing the MacOS into a phone was such a neat thing to me.
When it first came out, it was (in the US) limited to just one carrier. I think in 2011-2 was when it became available on all carriers.
I still haven't really used one. I had a Blackberry first then I've been Team Galaxy ever since.
I was in my junior year of college, and I literally - and somehow -- did not hear about it until a year later. At that point, I remember thinking "how cool," but also it was an unnecessary luxury that wasn't worth the expense because we had computers at home.
I entered the workforce in 2010 (a year after graduating because recession), and at my workplace, BlackBerrys dominated among those who had work mobile phones. And I had my flip phone until 2013.
I realized I was seeing something transformative but thought it wouldn't have a big impact until the price came down substantially. Of course, the opposite happened. I personally have never owned one; I got really excited about Android even before a single Android phone was released because of its potential to make the technology affordable.
I specifically remember being disappointed they called it a "phone" because it was a new category that just included phone functionality and the name should have reflected that.
In retrospect the bigger innovation was the App Store, which didn't come along until the next year.
I will tell you this as a digital product professional who does product demos: Steve Jobs' iPhone unveiling is the greatest product presentation ever done. Everyone who does demos needs to watch it. This is what I always tell people: Probably 90 percent of the people in that theater had a BlackBerry or a similar device, used it all day, loved it. Within about two minutes, Jobs had them all chuckling knowingly about how shitty the BackBerry was. It's a really tremendous piece of salesmanship.
I was only like 6 or 7 lol, I vaguely remember hearing about it when my parents would watch tv but I don’t remember actually seeing one outside of store displays until several years later. Obviously I was too young at the time to fully remember but it doesn’t really seem like it became common to actually own one until several years after it came out.
I got one in 2009. I was 34 and pregnant. I loved it with a newborn - feeding the baby in the wee hours and I could pull out my phone and read, on a device small enough to hold in one hand. I think I probably also noted times he woke up and needed to be fed, which felt important with a 2 week old! Also would have used it to record his height and weight.
I don't remember it getting much traction up until 2011. But come Summer 2011, everyone and their mothers had one all of a sudden.
This is so true, the iPhone 4 really made an impact, everyone went from random phones to and iPhone within about a year
I had a 4S for a lot of years until I went to a Phish show and it suffered too much rain damage. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.
They do, though. You can have an iPhone for a whole 5-6 years of software support.
I remember when they tried to push the Blackberry Curve as the new cool thing or whatever. Im guessing that never worked out.
Blackberry was very 2010-2011. The iPhone killed the BlackBerry fast in 2011-2012.
Interesting
Same here. My mother had a blackberry until 2011 then she got an iPhone. My dad had a small Android cell phone with a scroll ball (idk the actual name) toward the bottom below the screen in 2010ish.
This tracks with my experience – people thought iPhones and social media were gimmicky and for hipsters and college students until they suddenly became ubiquitous and naturalized in 2011.
3GS really started it all!
That's the year that the iPhone went from being an AT&T exclusive to all carriers
2012 years ago was the year over 50% of Americans finally had smart phones. The tipping point between worlds.
Old people skew the average. Most people you'd see in public had them by the end of 2011 i'd argue. At the very least, 2011 is when they became a common occurance.
Sent from my iPhone For the first year or two, that is what most people remember. It was a bit of a novelty at first. For the rich and technologically adventurous. I attended the wedding of some Apple obsessed friends (who had met while working at the Apple store) a few months after the iPhone came out and they did not even have it yet. Between the ceremony and reception they went to the Apple store to take pics and purchase… the latest Mac OS. Blackberry users hated that it had no physical keyboard and were very hesitant to switch.
I vaguely remember something about how the first iPhone didn’t automatically pull emails while blackberry did, which was why offices still preferred blackberries as company-provided cellphones.
Yes! I was an office manager at a smallish company at the time and we had this one guy who immediately had to have an iPhone, while everyone was still on Blackberry. He paid for it himself and he was important enough, the IT guy had to fuck around with the Exchange server and Microsoft tech support to make it work just for him, lol.
They felt expensive and unnecessary for YEARS after they came out. "I only use my phone for texting and calls. Why do I need all this extra stuff?" And we'd make fun of the people who seemed super attached and face down on their phones all the time. A few years later and we'd all have one. I feel like I was one of the last holdouts. Didn't replace my flip phone until 2012.
My parents were late holdouts too. They didn’t want to pay the extra money for it. They only used it for texts and calls so what’s the point. It started to become an issue in like 2012 and 2013 once all my friends in school were getting them and I really wanted one and they were like I’m not getting my middle schooler a better phone than me, but they refused to upgrade so I had some like 2006/2007 phone going into 2014. They finally bought in when my dad got an iPhone from his job and then downloaded a few games and realized how much better they were.
Though I had work-issued smartphones I used to a limited extent, I didn't replace my flip phone until 2015.
2007, I am sitting on a couch and listening about this concept of a cell phone. My cousin tells me it is from Apple, a touchscreen (without a stylus) and essentially a phone that can do everything. She starts naming its potential functions, and here I am so confused because I already had in my mind that the BlackBerry was the top of the line cell phone in the late 2000s. I didn't think for a minute that this phone would ever take off, and I was confused on why anyone would ever want one. A few years later, I see some of my friends have the iPod Touch, very similar to the iPhone. I begin to take note of how revolutionary this "iPhone" could be if done correctly. The iPod touch was a real slick iPod, and I was able to borrow my friends devices to get a feel for the product. Flashforward to 2011 and Apple releases the gamechanger iPhone 4S after the moderately successful iPhone 4. The 4 was the blueprint for the 4S, and that was the phone that killed off all the dumbphones. This was the phone that introduced iMessage, iCloud and Notification Center which have all become standard features. Android took off a year or two later as a competitor, "Droid" was how they were advertised. 2014 and almost everyone dumped their "dumbphone" for an iPhone or Android. iOS 7 is released and erases all the skeuomorphism. The IOS7 look, for the most part, has remained on all the OS releases since. Since then, it is difficult to find someone who doesn't know how to use the smartphone features in an instant. The iPhone 4S changed the cell phone game.
Take a look at this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/xmyy/apple\_iphone\_now\_real/](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/xmyy/apple_iphone_now_real/)
I remember doing an acting gig in the fall of '07 (so I would've been 15) with Rashida Jones, and she was the first person I'd met who had one. At one point she asked me to take a photo of her in costume and I was like, oh, this thing is really cool. I still had a Blackberry and would have one until 2011, though. They didn't really become super mainstream until that year and getting one was really exciting because then I could get Instagram, which had only been introduced the previous year.
Were you an extra in The Office? Jk but that sounds cool
I don't remember the release itself, but I remember the start of the first iPhone sales in my country and first advertisements of it. In that time, it seemed quite unusual, because many people had cell phones with buttons, and iPhone seemed like something for "rich people" or "elite". It had become more popular in my country since early 2010s.
It took "never change" a bit too literally.
My cousin had one of the early models. I’m gonna assume the 2nd Gen because unless he spent all his money he had saved up and shit there’s no way he afforded the first one. I was a little kid and just remember being blown away by what it could do.
I was 33 and walked into the Apple store in Plano, TX to look at it. I walked out with a the 4gb model. I thought it was the coolest thing ever at the time. Downsizing the MacOS into a phone was such a neat thing to me.
When it first came out, it was (in the US) limited to just one carrier. I think in 2011-2 was when it became available on all carriers. I still haven't really used one. I had a Blackberry first then I've been Team Galaxy ever since.
I was in my junior year of college, and I literally - and somehow -- did not hear about it until a year later. At that point, I remember thinking "how cool," but also it was an unnecessary luxury that wasn't worth the expense because we had computers at home. I entered the workforce in 2010 (a year after graduating because recession), and at my workplace, BlackBerrys dominated among those who had work mobile phones. And I had my flip phone until 2013.
I realized I was seeing something transformative but thought it wouldn't have a big impact until the price came down substantially. Of course, the opposite happened. I personally have never owned one; I got really excited about Android even before a single Android phone was released because of its potential to make the technology affordable. I specifically remember being disappointed they called it a "phone" because it was a new category that just included phone functionality and the name should have reflected that. In retrospect the bigger innovation was the App Store, which didn't come along until the next year. I will tell you this as a digital product professional who does product demos: Steve Jobs' iPhone unveiling is the greatest product presentation ever done. Everyone who does demos needs to watch it. This is what I always tell people: Probably 90 percent of the people in that theater had a BlackBerry or a similar device, used it all day, loved it. Within about two minutes, Jobs had them all chuckling knowingly about how shitty the BackBerry was. It's a really tremendous piece of salesmanship.
I was only like 6 or 7 lol, I vaguely remember hearing about it when my parents would watch tv but I don’t remember actually seeing one outside of store displays until several years later. Obviously I was too young at the time to fully remember but it doesn’t really seem like it became common to actually own one until several years after it came out.
My birthday is also today !
2007 was a fun year!
Does anyone else remember the tech optimism that lasted to like 2013-14?
Fun fact: Gordon Brown scrapes the title of the last pre-iPhone British prime minister, taking office just 2 days before the iPhone's release
I just replaced my iPhone 7 today. We had a good run. I bought a refurbished 10R. Fuck buying things that are new.
Dang
I am sending this comment from my iPhone.
The ruin of modern society.
The day 2000s died
I got one in 2009. I was 34 and pregnant. I loved it with a newborn - feeding the baby in the wee hours and I could pull out my phone and read, on a device small enough to hold in one hand. I think I probably also noted times he woke up and needed to be fed, which felt important with a 2 week old! Also would have used it to record his height and weight.
I also had a baby in 2009 and didn't have one. Now, in 2024, I have a baby again. It's so much easier now.
The downfall of society.
I remember it being a gimmicky toy for rich people when it came out.