19 Years Later, Apple Has Somehow Come Full Circle

There’s something wonderfully familiar about this image.

On the bottom, we have 2007: Steve Jobs standing on stage with the original iPhone, holding up the little black rectangle that would completely change Apple — and the phone industry along with it.

At the top, we have 2026: Apple’s latest generation of iPhone, now dramatically different in form, being held up in almost the exact same spirit.

And honestly, the comparison works surprisingly well.

The original iPhone was all about taking something people already understood — a phone — and turning it into something that felt completely new. It was smaller than the smartphones that came before it, had that enormous touchscreen, and introduced a completely different way of interacting with a mobile computer.

Fast-forward nearly two decades and Apple is doing something similar again.

The iPhone Duo takes the familiar iPhone idea and essentially asks: what if the iPhone could become an iPad mini when you need it?

Fold it up and you’ve got a relatively compact iPhone. Open it and you’ve suddenly got a much larger canvas for apps, video, multitasking and everything else you do on your phone.

But it’s the visual similarity in this image that really caught my attention;

The pose.
The phone being held up.
The simple background.
That feeling of “look what we made.”

Obviously, 2026 isn’t 2007. Apple is a very different company, and the iPhone is a very different product.

But seeing the two moments side by side makes you realise just how far the original iPhone idea has travelled.

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From a tiny black rectangle in 2007 to a folding iPhone in 2026.

Not a bad 19-year journey.