This week is the 10 year anniversary of the original iPhone being released to the public (in the US, the rest of the world had to wait a few more months) and it’s amazing to look back on how far phones have come.
It's especially fun to look at the early prototype devices for the original iPhone that never made it to market.
Ken Kocienda – the man who worked on the first iPhone’s software keyboard – shared photos on Twitter of devices he has had stored in his desk for the last ten years.
Here are two iPhone prototypes. We called them Wallabies. I used these devices to make the software keyboard. pic.twitter.com/qbofBL3RUtJune 29, 2017
The devices were originally codenamed “Wallabies”, but Kocienda has said it was never clear why the marsupials were chosen as the secret moniker for the first phone from Apple.
Ten years on
The two prototypes look even chunkier than the original iPhone and come with plastic bodies, rather than the metal cases seen on the first iPhone when it originally launched back in 2007.
Neither of the devices pictured above worked on their own though. Kocienda said, "The Wallabies were just touchscreens driven by a Mac and a bare motherboard through a 30-pin connector."
Kocienda hasn't shared when these devices were being used in development and he's unclear if there were other prototype devices used before the June 2007 release, but this shot gives us a great insight into what the phone looked like early in its life.
