Apple's secret iPhone designs: This is what the smartphone of the future looked like!

Apple's secret iPhone designs: This is what the smartphone of the future looked like!

Secret revelations about the first iPhone prototype cause a stir! Apple originally wanted to develop a smartphone based on the popular iPod. Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod, revealed that the first draft of the cell phone used a "Click Wheel" as a central control element, instead of the later touchscreen. This means that the users should navigate with a wheel, which is hardly imaginable these days!

It is particularly striking that the prototype already had a built -in camera, and the design was very similar to the later iPhone. However, this mysterious device was not made directly by Apple, but by an external manufacturer, long before the first iPhone 2007 came onto the market. Steve Jobs showed great interest in this iPod-based concept at the beginning, but after it was found that the operation with the Click Wheel was not practical, the decision for the revolutionary touchscreen was made, such as oe24.at reported.

insight into the out of print prototypes

Latest pictures and videos, published by Sonny Dickson, show a fascinating insight into another prototype called "Acornos". This also uses the Click Wheel for navigation, combined with a user interface that is strongly based on that of the iPod. The lower half of the screen shows a quick selection for music and games, while other functions such as "call" or "SMS" can be found above. Interestingly, patent documents from 2006 show the existence of such a device with an optional click Wheel, which underlines the authenticity of the prototype, such as The verge reported.

Fadell said in 2012 that there were countless designs, including a variant "iPod plus telephone", which finally failed in development. The difficulties with the small display in combination with the hardware -based wheel resulted in the user interface being perceived as complicated. Today it is difficult to imagine that Apple wanted to optimize the user experience with a click Wheel during its early development days. But as Fadell said: "Sometimes you have to try things out to throw them away."