My iPhone X is now shipping and I should have it hopefully by Friday. The X will be my fifth iPhone. In celebration and anticipation of it’s arrival I’d like to take a walk down memory lane to reminisce on the iPhones I’ve owned thus far.

Prologue

I joined the iPhone parade a couple years into the game and hopped onto what became Apple’s “S” cadence – the 3GS, 4s, 5s, 6s, and now 7s 8 X. When Apple first demoed the iPhone in January 2007 I thought it was cool but had no interest in it otherwise. I watched the keynote and was happy that Apple was making the touch interface technology I’d read about into reality. I had just purchased a Samsung flip phone (with “the internet” and T9 texting) and didn’t have hundreds of dollars pour into a contract cancellation fee and spend on a phone that only ran on the AT&T EDGE network.

Some time after the iPhone shipped in June 2007 I tried one out at an Apple Store and realized what I’d been missing: it was amazing. I had an iPod that I loved but the iPhone blew it out of the water! The fact that I could connect to the iTunes store and buy music at work made it a million times better than my iPod. Texting with an actual keyboard was way better than trying to use the stupid number pad on my phone and having a real web browser that displayed real websites was awesome. A screen large enough to actually see the photos I took was also a bonus. Unfortunately I still had quite a bit of time on my cell phone contract… and I still couldn’t afford it.

When the iPod Touch came to market in September 2007 I finally had a real job and treated myself to one, as a post-graduation “I’m officially an adult” sort of thing. Though I couldn’t get on WiFi at work to realize my iTunes dream I still loved it as a music player. iPhone OS 2.0 (as it was called then) added the App Store which at least gave me some offline options to use at work and a nice way to browse Facebook while at home.

In June of the next year Apple introduced the 3G, which was newly subsidized by AT&T, bringing the entry price down to $199. It included fast (for the time) 3G networking and GPS, but was otherwise largely the same as the original. Due to the subsidy, this became the model for the masses. Over the next year it seemed like everyone I knew had one. As my contract slowly ticked to completion I watched all of my friends check websites in Safari, catch up on their friends in that fancy Facebook app, and text each other using a keyboard with a full alphabet. Jealous was not the word for it.

Good things come to those who wait, and after two years I was finally free from contract and could buy an iPhone. I was using Sprint and was ready to jump ship to AT&T anyway due to better voice coverage in my area. Verizon wasn’t a thing on the iPhone yet so that wasn’t an option. I could have run out to get a 3G but I knew we were close to the next release (June was right around the corner!) so I decided to wait. I’m glad I did.