The Evolution of the iPhone

1. The Apple iPhone

The much-anticipated original iPhone was announced at MacWorld in January 2007, but did not go on sale until six months later. In that marketplace full touchscreen phones were still a rarity, but the iPhone boasted slim 11.6mm dimensions, a 3.5-inch, 480 x 320 multi-touch display, an accelerometer, 4GB or 8GB of storage, free push email from Yahoo, visual voicemail, Bluetooth and automatic Wi-Fi connectivity. Among its most disappointing specs were the quad-band GSM radio with EDGE (most smartphones of the time were 3G) and the 2-megapixel camera (5-megapixels were becoming the norm for higher-end handsets).However, consumers were impressed with the device's built-in software capabilities. The first-gen handset offered Google Maps, iTunes with CoverFlow, a full-fat Safari browser and something Apple called "widgets," at the time of launch, Weather and Stocks. Nearer to the device's June debut, Apple announced the iPhone would ship with "a new Apple-designed application" to "wirelessly stream YouTube's content."It's worth noting that third-party software was entirely absent from the iPhone's launch. It wasn't until March 2008 that an SDK was released for a limited number of developers who signed up to the developer program, although iPhone owners wouldn't get their hands on "apps" until the release of the iPhone OS 2.0 later that year.

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Now that Apple has revealed the iPhone 5, we thought it would be interesting to take a look back and see how the handset has evolved over the last five years.

From 2.5G to LTE, from widgets to apps, and from revolutionary multi-touch to Siri, there have been major changes with each unveiled model.

SEE ALSO: 10 Fascinating Facts You Didnt Know About Apple

Take a look through our slideshow to review each iteration of the iPhone. Let us know in the comments below which of the iPhone 5's features you're most impressed with.

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