I definitely do not think that opinion was widespread. If anything I think that the biggest discussed shortcoming of the first iPhone was that it was only available on AT&T.
It didn't multitask, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time had at least the appearance of multitasking. It didn't have the ability to install any additional software, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time handled third-party software just fine. It didn't even have a copy/paste function, even though [WTF? Srsly, Apple?].
All of these things were eventually corrected by Apple, but it was pretty awful until they were corrected: For quite some time, the iPhone was just a rather fancy touchscreen music player with telephone and SMS programs tacked on.
(More damning: All of these things were corrected very quickly by third parties via jailbreaks. Some of us were having a ball with first-gen IOS devices very early on in the game, but Apple wasn't any help in getting that accomplished.)
I guess I (and to be honest, reviewers at large at the time) just have a very different definition of "pretty terrible". Sure, it was easy to see how it wasn't "fully complete", but I think that is true of literally every brand new product.
And to take two of your examples, multitasking and 3rd party software, yeah, other pocket computers had them, and they generally sucked hard (see, Windows Mobile). Even the lack of copy/paste - other phones had them, but there was (and honestly still is) considerable debate over how it should be implemented given multitouch was new.
Yeah, but the first iPod touch was great. It came out only 3 months after the iPhone.
It seems like the Vision Pro 1 has the M2 so that when the Vision, or Vision Air comes out, it will be at least as powerful as the first Pro. And the Pro 2 can have the M3.
First iPod Touch was even worse: It had all of the limitations of the iPhone, plus it additionally lacked cellular connectivity, messaging, voice, Bluetooth, GPS, speaker, Bluetooth, and camera.
The first iPhone didn't have GPS either. No iPods had speakers back then so that wasn't missed, you just used your earbuds. It was great for browsing the web and media consumption, since you either had WiFi or you didn't (no slow Edge network to tease you). Once the App store came out you had Instapaper for offline reading, and Google Voice for messaging/calls.
You're right. The first iPhone did not have GPS. But it did have the connectivity to make other geolocation services useful, at least in a "Where the fuck am I at?" sense. (And the iPod Touch also had wifi-based geolocation services that were spooky-good, if it was online somehow.)
But from various PalmOS devices to whatever Android device is in my pocket right now, carrying wired headphones has never been a thing for me for whatever reason.
So as a Google Voice user since it was still called GrandCentral, having Google Voice available on a Wifi-connected touchscreen pocket music player called an iPod Touch was simply never very useful to me: The OG iPod Touch was lousy as a telephone, since it lacked all of the basic parts (like a microphone or an earpiece) that made telephones useful, and SMS was not yet in its heyday back then either.
I got much better use of the service with my dumb phone with T9 text input and transcription of voicemails to SMS, and my dumb phone worked anywhere instead of just where I could find a Wifi network.
Jailbroken, the iPod was an amazing pocket computer with a brilliant display, thin profile, and exceptional responsiveness to touch input, especially with third-party apps and improvements installed. It was fun having a real *nix userland installed on it, and it sure seemed novel to SSH from it.
By default, though? Almost useless except as a music player -- a task that previous iPods did better.
(I mostly used my OG iPod Touch to take offline notes. It did OK at this, but previously-used PalmOS devices did better in terms of input speed and portability of those notes.
Even relatively high-end aftermarket car stereos at the time were afraid of it: "Oh, why sure I can play music with your iPod!
>For quite some time, the iPhone was just a rather fancy touchscreen music player with telephone and SMS programs tacked on.
It had the only truly usable mobile web browser. Windows Mobile's IE was trash, and the browsers on Palm OS, Blackberry and Symbian were laughable. This was the killer app (especially on Wifi, EDGE was not great).
We should bear in mind that at the time it launched many early adopters were on the fence and kept a second phone around (most people around me did until basically the iPhone 4). We look back at it as a fun area, but it was in part because we accepted it was flawed and limited.
When trying to use the iPhone seriously, at some point it wouldn't receive calls anymore (just silently crash the deamon receiving it, you'd never know if not told by the caller afterwards), drop active calls when battery was too low (single digit), call quality could be horrible, stuff would crash from time to time.
Memory would leak like a sueve from everywhere so rebooting the phone every now and then was good hygiene. It's only after the 3GS that it stabilized, otherwise antennagate would have been just another tuesday IMO.
It was still a stellar device, but not a fully reliable device in any way shape or form.
It was usable on any other network, I had one and it wasn’t AT&T locked
Compared to all the smartphones of the time, it was a slow toy with no apps and a 2G connection that was completely worthless
It looked nice though, and eventually it got an app store (unnoficially first), and the overall UX was a clear winner (nobody believed touch screens would ever replace blackberry style devices!)
> When Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007,[38] it was sold only with AT&T (formerly Cingular) contracts in the United States.[32] After 18 months of negotiations, Steve Jobs reached an agreement with the wireless division of AT&T[39] to be the iPhone's exclusive carrier. Consumers were unable to use any other carrier without unlocking their device.
There were apps and hacks to sim unlock the original iPhone. I was using mine on T-Mobile after using it for a couple of months on prepaid AT&T GoPhone.
So you can't really describe the experience for the several different US carriers which it didn't work on, and thus can't really say it worked on any other network. Verizon was a network it didn't work on, and thus fails the "any other network" standard you set earlier.
It is not a minor detail, Verizon and Sprint were two absolutely massive carriers and it was truly impossible to run the iPhone on those networks. And running it on T-Mobile meant voiding your AT&T contract and paying some big fees if buying it first-hand. Practically speaking, to most consumers it was only AT&T.
It is not being pedantic to point out someone is saying something massively untrue.
Your comment makes it sound like anyone could just easily take an OG iPhone and run it on any network, but in reality, to US consumers it was only a few smaller networks and only after breaking an expensive contract. See how that's more than just a pedantic difference?
Albeit not from the computer nerds who knew what they were getting, but the general public who thought they were buying a phone on par with the Motorola, Nokia or Panasonic phones in term of reliability.
My memory of it was that when it first came out, it was worse in all ways compared to the best of what already existed, save one, and that was capacitive multi-touch. That was a big enough improvement in itself that nothing else mattered.
I definitely do not think that opinion was widespread. If anything I think that the biggest discussed shortcoming of the first iPhone was that it was only available on AT&T.