iPhone, a never-before-seen prototype with physical ring and buttons appears

The path that led to the launch of iPhone back in 2007 it was not perfectly linear. First, the idea of ​​making their own smartphone came to Jobs and the others after flop of the collaboration between Apple And Motorolawho for a time worked together with the Rokr E1the first phone to natively support iTunes.

Furthermore, the first prototypes of iPhones were very imaginative, different from the classic touch model that we all know today.

One such prototype was recently unveiled by Tony Fadellwhich on the occasion of the release of his new book (Build) gave a long interview to TechCrunch in which he tells the background of his life as an Apple engineer and general manager of the iPod project.

And it is iPod that the team chose to be inspired to actually make the first iPhone by. The idea – at least at the beginning – was to insert a phone inside an iPod, while keeping the essential traits of the iPod design and in particular theiconic ferrule with the menu, play / pause and forward / back buttons.

L’”iPod Plus Phone”- Fadell calls it that – it had to be made up of two parts, one mobile and the other fixed. The movable part, the lower one, would have included the classic ring on one side, and on the other a flat numeric keypad (with the keys not in relief); the upper part, on the other hand, would have been the one dedicated to the screen (on the front) and the camera (on the back).

Steve Jobs he was absolutely convinced that the bezel could not be missing on the first iPhone model. On the other hand, that was the very element that made the iPods recognizable, “iconic”. The Apple team worked for weeks and weeks to get a similar prototype, but was eventually forced to give up.

The difficulties encountered during the execution of the project convinced the team to fall back on another solution. Thus was born theiPhone 2G or iPhone EDGEa smartphone equipped with a tactile and multi-touch screen as well as a single central button destined to become equally iconic.