The iPhone name has been used for a number of products, but is best known as the smartphone
line released in 2007 by Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. Apple’s
iPhone popularized the use of touchscreens as a primary interface for a
mobile phone.
Beyond the aspects standard in most smartphones such as Internet
connectivity and messaging, the iPhone’s features can be divided into
three main groups: hardware, media, and applications.
The iPhone’s hardware has been one of its biggest draws. Based
around touchscreen technology, the iPhone does not have a keypad,
instead, a virtual keyboard and keypad are displayed on the touchscreen
when required. The removal of the physical keypad lets the iPhone’s
screen be much larger than that of similar-sized mobile phones. An
accelerometer allows the iPhone to react and change its screen display
depending on if it is being viewed horizontally or vertically. The phone
also has an internal flash drive to store data. Other hardware features
include a digital camera, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, speaker, Wi-Fi™ connectivity, Bluetooth®, and, in later models, A-GPS.
