Ten years ago today, Apple revealed the iPhone 5 to the world. Back on the 12th September 2012, Phil Schiller was responsible for announcing the new hardware at Apple’s iconic keynotes, following the death of Steve Jobs the year before. The iPhone 5 was significant, because this marked the first time the iPhone had changed in screen size since the original iPhone in 2007, just five years prior.

The iPhone 5 was also the first iPhone to feature 4G LTE.

“iPhone 5 is the most beautiful consumer device that we’ve ever created. We’ve packed an amazing amount of innovation and advanced technology into a thin and light, jewel-like device with a stunning 4-inch Retina display, blazing fast A6 chip, ultrafast wireless, even longer battery life; and we think customers are going to love it.”

Phil Schiller

Apple also changed the connector for the iPhone for the first time and took the opportunity to release EarPods, the replacement for the then pretty old earbuds. The Lightning connector is something that is extremely ubiquitous in 2022, but it 2012 it was hit was some uproar. Now in 2022, the tides are set to change again, with customers demanding USB-C now.

The iPhone 12 was all about thinness, to achieve this Apple also adopted the nanoSIM for the first time. Now in 2022, Apple has completely removed the physical SIM card on the new iPhone 14.

A lot has changed in ten years of the iPhone. They have gotten larger, wider, taller and they can go a lot longer, with larger batteries. iOS itself has changed a lot since iOS 6, which was the last version to feature skeuomorphism and was plagued by the Apple Maps issues.