Apple iphone

The Awards is now ten years old, and to honour the fact we’ve reached our pivotal anniversary, we’ve introduced this one-off category: Gadget of the Decade. And there really could only be one winner: the Apple iPhone. When the iPhone was introduced back in 2007, it was pretty much the most revolutionary piece of tech we’d seen – the multi-touch display was unlike any other smartphone screen. Being able to zoom into and out of photos, have a proper browsing experience on a smartphone, and use your fingers to navigate the screen was a sheer pleasure.

The first iPhone was certainly not without its flaws, but it paved the way for every smartphone in existence today – its multi-touch screen soon become the de facto standard as other manufacturers followed suit.

In 2008, the iPhone 3G followed, bringing much-needed 3G data to the device. This was succeeded in 2009 by the iPhone 3Gs, which added a speed boost but no change in form-factor.

The iPhone 4 (2010) was perhaps the biggest change in the phone’s history, bringing an all-glass design that divided opinion (but in our opinion looked fantastic). Touted as the world’s thinnest smartphone by Steve Jobs when he annouced it, it also introduced the Retina Display with a PPI of 326.

The iPhone 5 was a bit more lowkey when it was launched in 2012, adding just minor improvements, before the iPhone 5s (2013) introduced Touch ID – the fingerprint recognition that we’re now so used to on smartphones.

In 2015, the iPhone 6 debuted with a different form factor and also a bigger brother – the 6 Plus. For the first time, Apple had made a phablet, and it rocked. And now here we are with the iPhone 7 upon us, Apple once again rewriting the rulebook by not featuring a headphone port.

Whatever you think of the iPhone, there’s no way you can’t recognise it as the most significant gadget in recent history. It’s inspired a world of smartphone tech like no other product. That’s why it’s T3’ s Gadget of the Decade.