AN UNOPENED original iPhone has sold for a staggering $39,339 (£34,908) at auction.
The iconic Apple gadget came out in 2007 and cost just $499 (£269).
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Now 15 years later, a box-fresh model has sold for nearly 80 times that.
The iPhone was offered at a recent LCG auction with a starting bid of $2,500.
But after 28 bids, the price had skyrocketed to nearly $40,000.
“All original – no aftermarket stickers or UPC labels on this one,” LCG Auctions explained.
“Brand new, never activated. Collectors and investors would be hard pressed to find a superior example.
“Relevance and rarity comprise a winning formula for this red hot collectible.”
It’s an enormous sum of money for a gadget that celebrated its 15th anniversary just this year.
Late Apple founder Steve Jobs unveiled the handset on January 9, 2007.
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It didn’t come out until June 29 that same year, but the announcement was an unforgettable part of gadget history.
Jobs snubbed the stylus and hailed a keyboard-less touchscreen as the future of computing. He wasn’t wrong.
But how well do you really remember that original iPhone model?
There was no App Store at launch
We take apps for granted these days, but they weren’t always a given.
In fact, the original iPhone didn’t have an App Store when it launched.
That came later in 2008.
The iPhone did have apps on it – Apple fare like Phone, Calendar, Weather, Notes and more.
But you couldn’t install third-party apps through the official Apple App Store until July 2008.
The iPhone was missing loads of features at launch, including a front camera for selfies, video recording, and even a torch.
In the absence of a flashlight, some early iPhone apps allowed you to set a white screen to maximum brightness. Not quite the same…
It only had 4GB of storage
The original iPhone had a paltry 4GB of storage.
It didn’t feel too awful at the time because image sizes were smaller, the burden of apps was far lighter, and internet speeds were still fairly slow.
That’s a stark contrast to today, where the current iPhone starts at 128GB and rises all the way to a whopping 1TB on some models.
The screen was just 3.5 inches
When the iPhone came out, it had a tiny 3.5-inch screen.
That’s the measurement diagonally from corner to corner.
And it’s actually hard to believe we used such tiny screens.
By comparison, iPhones of today typically range from 5.8 inches to 6.7 inches across.
It turns out that people like using their iPhones to watch TV, play games and scroll through TikTok videos – so a good screen is now essential.
People thought it would never catch on
These days, the iPhone is just a part of life. It’s unimaginable that it wouldn’t exist.
But when it was first rumoured – and then launched – Apple was mocked by many.
People joked about making phone calls on a glorified iPod, and thought the lack of a physical keypad would never catch on.
Of course, the same happened when the iPad launched, and so too with the Apple Watch.
Apple has since dominated all three product categories, ultimately proving the naysayers wrong.
It only cost $499
When the original iPhone came out, it retailed for $499.
That might seem like a bargain these days, but inflation puts it closer to $669 in today’s money.
That’s actually cheaper than the iPhone 14 proper, which costs $799/£849.
But you can buy the 2nd-generation iPhone SE for $429/$449 right now – with far superior tech to that original iPhone.
So although iPhone prices have soared astronomically to as high as $1,500 for some models, it’s not the case for every variant.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
