On January 9th of 2007, the iconic iPhone was announced.

When Steve Jobs undraped the first iPhone 10 years ago today, he flaunted Apple's capacity to pool three products -- "a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps -- into one small and lightweight handheld device."

Those characteristics are ever present in today's iPhones, but they also encompass much more. 2 million apps later, altering all our spheres of life from the way we commute to the way we communicate with family and friends, the iPhone has become a fundamental tenet of our daily routines. Moreover, it has led to the birth of hundreds of copycats and created new industries that couldn't exist without phones. The iPhone is the undoubtedly most successful and innovative consumer device ever created because it has perpetuated with its genesis a means to an end, and is self-sustaining because it is constantly evolving.

© Blake Patterson / Commons Wikimedia

The original iPhone, possessed solely 4GB of storage and was bereft of a GPS or video recording feature. As the years flew by, the phone was transformed to appear sleeker whilst being embellished with more processing power and more app-based features.

A year later, in 2008, Apple updated its phone to run on 3G network - the latest in data communication, and added GPS technology. The simultaneous launch of the app store was a significant milestone as it extended the scope of the business to third party stakeholders and fostered technological innovation, creating a new market in and of itself. The introduction of the 'S' version meant a smaller upgrade. So, in 2009 came the iPhone 3GS with an updated camera and video recording abilities.

Since then, we have seen iPhone 4 which introduced us to sleek retina displays and FaceTime that kept us connected with our friends and family. The 4s gave us a new friend, the smooth talking Siri. The iPhone 5 hit a growth spurt, and this allowed for a fifth row of icons and a taller screen. The 5s made us feel like secret agents with their unruffled fingerprint identity sensors. The 6s endowed us with a variety of colors - from a cold space gray to a warm rose gold. The iPhone 7 handed people the ability to swim with our phones, but also the need to purchase new headphones due to the removal of the headphone jack.

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And finally, the world twiddles its thumbs over the release of the upcoming iPhone 8. The new device will allegedly be lighter, sleeker, thinner and powered by OLED. The screen will run across the entire landscape of the phone and the organic LED display allows the screen to shine brighter while also using less energy: this is more efficient and environmentally friendly. It will also have a new Apple Pay service which apes Venmo and other peer-to-peer payment apps, within iMessage itself. However, the home screen button will soon be rendered obsolete as it will soon evolve to a virtual one on the screen. The new Gorilla Glass, will be less prone to all too familiar spider-web scratches and faint cracks.

Clearly, the iPhone has a "bright" future ahead of it, as does the technology market it has helped expand over the years.