You might look back at the original iPhone and think about how far technology has come since then, but when the original iPhone debuted, it was already years ahead of the competition.

The original iPhone changed the way the world looked at mobile phones. Phones used to be good for, well, phone calls and not much else. While the competition was still releasing flip phones, Apple’s revolutionary iPhone design changed the way we think about our phones, and redefined what a smart device could be.

Here are some of the ways the first iPhone was years ahead of the competition.

1. It Had a Sleek Design

iPhones on yellow background

Most phones from the early 2000s weren’t winning any points for style. And even when they were sleek, a lot of the time they prioritized form over function. The Motorola Razr V3 was paper thin when compared to other phones, but that thin profile also meant it sacrificed usability and battery life.

In an era dominated by flip phones, the iPhone was a flat plane of glass that didn’t move at all. While other manufacturers were happy to mold their devices out of cheap plastic—body, screen and all—the iPhone was made of glass and aluminum. At a time when phone designs ranged from clunky Nokia bricks to bizarre creations like the Motorola Aura, the original iPhone’s simplicity and elegance was a breath of fresh air.

2. It Ditched the Stylus

Phone on table with stylus

When it came to touchscreen devices before the iPhone, they were always bundled with a trusty sidekick: the stylus. That’s because most touchscreen devices from the 90s and early 2000s used a resistive touchscreen, which means the device detected inputs on a slightly flexible plastic screen.

Unlike old-school PDAs, the iPhone was fitted with a capacitive touch screen, which uses your body’s natural electrical conductivity to detect touches. That meant instead of pulling out a stylus, all you needed to operate the iPhone was your finger. The iPhone’s capacitive touch screen was not only more sensitive, but it allowed for multiple touch inputs at once, making activities like playing games and typing feel much more natural.

They say fashion is cyclical, and maybe technology is too. In recent years we’ve seen stylus-type accessories like Samsung’s S Pen and the Apple Pencil come back into style. But while certain people like digital artists and students might swear by them, most people are always going to default to using their finger, though there are lots of great apps designed for the Apple Pencil.

3. It Didn’t Have a Physical Keyboard

Blackberry phone on blurry background

There’s a reason so many phones used to have physical keyboards. For the longest time, touch screen keyboards just didn’t work. That’s because old PDAs and smart devices didn’t have very sensitive screens, and you could only input one key at a time. That made typing on them a headache.

In a bold move, the iPhone ditched the physical keyboard completely, and it worked. That’s because the iPhone not only had an accurate touch screen, but iPhone OS 1 was designed around you using your finger. The iPhone’s on-screen keyboard was operated the same way a physical keyboard would be. You could hold down Shift when you wanted to type capitals. If you wanted a bigger keyboard to type on, all you had to do was tilt the device to landscape mode.

That different way of thinking meant you didn’t need directional keys and a keyboard anymore, and you didn’t even miss them. Although iPhone keyboard cases were actually a thing for a little while, these days, few if any people miss having a physical keyboard.

4. It Redefined the Term “Camera Phone”

iPhone Camera icon

When the original iPhone launched, it shipped with a single 2MP rear camera. That’s nothing compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s triple-lens camera setup. But at the time, it blew the competition out of the water.

Before the iPhone, people weren’t snapping photos everywhere they went. Although camera phones had been around for a while, they didn’t take very good pictures, and they didn’t have enough storage space to keep more than a few photos on the device.

With so much more space for a large screen, the iPhone was brilliant for looking at photos. And the intuitive gestures, like swiping, pinching to zoom, and rotating, made it a breeze to browse through and edit them. These days, app support for social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook means you can snap your photos on your iPhone, edit them to perfection, and quickly upload them online. That’s something we take for granted today, but the original iPhone paved the way.

5. It Wasn’t Full of Gimmicks

Motorola Razr Phone on black background

The phone scene in the early 2000s was…well…different. It seemed like every phone had its own little trick. Phones flipped, they slid, they swiveled. The T-Mobile Sidekick even had a spring that flipped the screen 180 degrees before you used it. Unlike those phones, the iPhone wasn’t a gimmick. It didn’t have to be. It was designed to make your life better, not just to be a party trick. Its design was simple, but elegant, and its software was designed to be intuitive.

That same principle also applied to its features. The iPhone wasn’t the first phone that could get online, but it was one of the first phones you could actually do anything online with. The iPhone could access and navigate full webpages, at a time when the web browser on most phones wasn’t good for much else than downloading a few overpriced ringtones.

Although we’ve seen a wave of nostalgia over those funky devices from back in the day, there’s a reason why the iPhone is still the world’s best-selling phone and the Sidekick is a relic of the past.

The First iPhone Was a True Trailblazer

The iPhone was a success not only because it was a powerful device, but because it created a paradigm shift in the ways phones were designed and used. It managed to not only wow the world with its eye-catching design, but also make that design functional. It combined a multi-touch screen with software that was profoundly easy to use, while at the same time cutting out redundancies like styluses and physical keyboards.

The first iPhone pretty much invented the modern smartphone, and although it’s been well over a decade since the first iPhone hit store shelves, we can still see its influence all around us today.