49 Fun Facts About IPhone

Which coffee chain did Steve Jobs prank-call on stage at the 2007 unveiling, ordering 4,000 lattes to go?

Starbucks was what Jobs searched for in Google Maps, and he rang a store straight from its listing, then said 'just kidding, wrong number'.

Which Apple marketing chief was mocked for saying it took 'courage' to drop the headphone jack in 2016?

Phil Schiller's 'courage' still came with a free headphone-jack adapter in the box, an extra Apple quietly stopped including with new iPhones in 2018.

Apple's first iPhone TV ad, aired during the 2007 Oscars, was a montage of movie and TV stars saying which word?

Hello echoed Christian Marclay's 1995 film Telephones: Marclay had refused Apple permission to recreate it, yet Apple ran its own montage during the Oscars anyway.

What did Apple give every iPhone 4 owner free in 2010 after the 'Antennagate' complaints about lost signal?

A bumper case covered the steel antenna band that lost signal when gripped, and Apple refunded anyone who had already bought one.

The lower-case 'c' in the polycarbonate iPhone 5c of 2013 is widely taken to stand for what?

Color was the pitch, with the 5c sold in five bright shades, yet at launch it was the pricier iPhone 5s that sold out.

Siri's iPhone 4S debut was overshadowed by Steve Jobs's death, which came how soon after the October 2011 unveiling?

The next day, October 5, 2011, Jobs died, and Apple's homepage became a black-and-white portrait of him captioned 'Steve Jobs, 1955-2011'.

What did the notorious 2008 App Store app 'I Am Rich', priced at $999.99, actually display when opened?

A glowing red gem was all it showed, yet eight people paid $999.99 for it before Apple removed the app from the store.

Which tech blog paid $5,000 in 2010 for a prototype iPhone 4 that an Apple engineer had lost in Redwood City?

Gizmodo tore the prototype down and published it, and a police task force later raided the home of the editor who reviewed it, seizing his computers.

Which glassmaker's Gorilla Glass replaced the plastic screen Jobs had held up on stage in January 2007?

Corning revived a 1960s 'muscled glass' called Chemcor after Jobs complained that the prototype had scratched in his pocket.

Which 2017 anniversary iPhone dropped the home button and introduced Face ID at a then-record $999?

The iPhone X is why there was never an iPhone 9: Apple jumped from 8 to X, the Roman numeral for ten, to mark the iPhone's tenth anniversary.

What did Apple call the 326-pixel-per-inch screen that debuted on the iPhone 4 in 2010?

The Retina display was named for Jobs's claim that eyes can't pick out pixels at about 300 per inch from 10 to 12 inches away, a claim one display expert disputed.

Which reversible connector, announced with the iPhone 5 in 2012, replaced the 30-pin dock plug that iPods had used?

Lightning was smaller than the 30-pin plug, so owners of older docks and speakers needed Apple's Lightning-to-30-pin Adapter to keep using them.

Whose common-charger mandate pushed Apple to give the iPhone 15 a USB-C port in 2023, its first port change since 2012?

The European Union's rule made the iPhone 15 the first to switch ports since the iPhone 5, after Apple had warned the mandate would 'harm consumers'.

What does 'SE' stand for in the name of the 4-inch iPhone that Apple launched at $399 in March 2016?

Special Edition was Apple's answer to the 30 million 4-inch iPhones it said it had sold in 2015, proof that many buyers still wanted compact phones.

When Apple's App Store opened in 2008, what share of each paid app's sales did Apple keep?

30% went to Apple and 70% to developers, a standard rate that stayed even after a 2020 program cut the commission to 15% for developers earning up to $1 million.

Which game vanished from the App Store in August 2020 after its maker added a way to dodge Apple's payment system?

Fortnite was gone within hours of Epic Games' hotfix, and Epic sued the same day with a video parodying Apple's famous '1984' commercial.

Which US agency did Apple publicly defy in 2016 over an order to unlock a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone 5C?

The FBI got the hearing postponed less than a day before it was due, then dropped the case a week later after a third party unlocked the phone.

Which Taiwanese iPhone assembler is formally named Hon Hai Precision Industry?

Foxconn put up large nets outside factory buildings and hired counsellors after a spate of worker suicides at its Chinese plant in 2010.

Which carrier ended AT&T's exclusive US hold on the iPhone by selling a CDMA model from February 2011?

Verizon's iPhone 4 added a Personal Hotspot for up to five devices, and pre-orders opened on February 3, 2011.

Which service launched in 2014 with the iPhone 6, Apple's first iPhone with an NFC chip?

Apple Pay went live in October 2014, and within days CVS and Rite Aid switched off contactless payments at their tills to back a rival system, CurrentC.

Which video-calling service launched alongside the iPhone 4's first front-facing camera in June 2010?

FaceTime first worked only over Wi-Fi, and when Apple allowed cellular calls, AT&T limited them to certain plans, drawing complaints to the FCC.

Which service, the root of the 'green bubble' divide, arrived with iOS 5 in October 2011?

iMessage shows blue bubbles, and in December 2023 Apple cut off Beeper Mini, an Android app that had cracked iMessage, less than a week after it launched.

Which basic text-editing feature did iPhone owners wait two years for, until iPhone OS 3 added it in June 2009?

Cut, copy and paste appeared as a bubble when you press and hold text, in the same update that brought MMS and Spotlight search.

Which magazine named the original iPhone its Invention of the Year for 2007, months after the June launch?

Time's award came as Walt Mossberg called the iPhone 'a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer' despite 'some flaws and feature omissions'.

Which Microsoft chief dismissed the iPhone in 2007 as the world's most expensive phone, one with no keyboard?

Steve Ballmer said there was 'no chance' of significant market share, and in 2016 blamed his miss on carriers subsidising the iPhone's price.

Which Apple design chief, until then known for hardware, led the flat redesign that arrived with iOS 7 in 2013?

Jony Ive's iOS 7 zooming animations made some users feel sick, so iOS 7.0.3 let a Reduce Motion setting stop those transitions.

Which head of iOS software did Apple say was leaving, weeks after the troubled 2012 launch of Apple Maps?

Scott Forstall's exit followed Apple's apology for Maps, and his duties were split, with Craig Federighi taking over iOS software engineering.

Which desktop operating system did Steve Jobs claim the first iPhone simply 'runs' at the 2007 unveiling?

OS X was the claim, yet Jobs first steered outside developers to web apps for Safari, only promising a native-app SDK that October.

Which 2009 model, whose 'S' Apple said stood for speed, was the first Apple handset that could record video?

The iPhone 3GS also added voice control and a digital compass, and it sold more than a million units in its first weekend.

Which 2016 model was Apple's first with two rear cameras, gaining an exclusive Portrait mode in iOS 10.1?

The iPhone 7 Plus's Portrait mode used its wide-angle and telephoto cameras together to judge depth, blurring the background behind a sharp subject.

Which rival did a California jury order in 2012 to pay Apple $1.049 billion for copying the iPhone?

Samsung's damages were cut and retried for years before the rivals settled out of court in 2018 on undisclosed terms.

Apple admitted in 2017 that iOS slows iPhones with worn batteries to prevent what, in the affair dubbed 'Batterygate'?

Unexpected shutdowns were Apple's reason, and after the uproar it apologized and cut out-of-warranty battery replacements from $79 to $29.

Which Apple chip inside the iPhone 5s was the first 64-bit processor to ship in any smartphone?

The A7 began Apple's switch to 64-bit, which ended with iOS 11 in 2017 refusing to run old 32-bit apps at all.

Which Apple chip, launched with the 2017 iPhones, was the first to carry a dedicated 'Neural Engine'?

The A11 Bionic's Neural Engine was built for the machine learning behind Face ID and Animoji, at up to 600 billion operations a second.

Which 2005 Motorola handset, built with Apple, was the first phone to run iTunes, sixteen months before the iPhone?

The ROKR E1 arrived on September 7, 2005, from a collaboration between Apple and Motorola that the iPhone made redundant sixteen months later.

Which US body approved a 2010 exemption that made jailbreaking an iPhone legal?

The U.S. Copyright Office ruled over Apple's objections, after Apple had asked for jailbreaking to be treated as a copyright violation.

Which 17-year-old, later famous for hacking the PlayStation 3, was first to free an iPhone from AT&T in August 2007?

George Hotz traded his second unlocked iPhone for a Nissan 350Z and three more iPhones.

As of 2022, which Chinese city was home to the world's largest iPhone factory?

Zhengzhou's giant iPhone plant sits in the Airport Economy Zone, which authorities locked down in November 2022 amid COVID outbreaks and worker unrest.

Which 2015 Sundance comedy-drama, set in Hollywood on Christmas Eve, was shot on three iPhone 5s handsets?

Tangerine's crew used the FiLMiC Pro app, an anamorphic lens adapter and a Steadicam, and the film grossed nearly ten times its tiny budget.

Apple dropped the charger and EarPods from iPhone 12 boxes in 2020, yet by law kept the EarPods in which country?

France's law required phones to come with a hands-free kit to protect children 14 and under from radiation, so French iPhone 12 boxes kept EarPods.

Which satellite operator did Apple team with to launch Emergency SOS via satellite on the iPhone 14 in 2022?

Globalstar later sold Apple a 20% stake, and in 2026 Amazon agreed to buy it, with Amazon's Leo network set to power iPhone satellite services.

Apple's 2012 purchase of which fingerprint-sensor firm led to Touch ID on the iPhone 5s a year later?

AuthenTec's tech became Touch ID, and days after the iPhone 5s went on sale, Germany's Chaos Computer Club said it had fooled the sensor with a copied fingerprint.

Face ID builds on infrared depth sensing from which Israeli firm, bought by Apple in 2013, that also powered the Kinect?

PrimeSense reportedly cost Apple about $350 million, and Face ID's dot projector now throws more than 30,000 infrared points onto a face.

Which maker of the TouchStream multi-touch keyboard did Apple buy in 2005, laying the basis for the iPhone's screen?

FingerWorks grew out of Wayne Westerman's University of Delaware doctoral research into low-effort multi-touch typing for people with repetitive strain injuries.

Which voice actress recorded Siri's original American voice in 2005, unaware of its future use, then went public?

Susan Bennett recorded the lines in 2005 and only heard herself as Siri six years later; Apple never confirmed it, but an audio forensics expert did.

Jobs unveiled the first iPhone as three products in one: a widescreen iPod, a mobile phone and what third device?

The 'breakthrough Internet communicator' grew from a secretive deal with Cingular, which gave Apple a free hand to design the phone its own way.

At which San Francisco venue did Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone during his Macworld keynote on January 9, 2007?

Moscone Center's keynote also ended the name Apple Computer: Jobs announced the company was dropping 'Computer' to become Apple Inc.

Which long-requested ability, letting apps keep running in the background, arrived with iOS 4 in June 2010?

Multitasking in iOS 4 let apps like Pandora keep playing through seven new background services, while other apps were simply paused as users switched away.

Which Oscar-winning director shot the 2018 psychological thriller Unsane, starring Claire Foy, entirely on an iPhone?

Steven Soderbergh shot it in secret in June 2017 on a 2016-model iPhone and premiered it at the Berlin International Film Festival.