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- 1iPhone
The original iPhone, unveiled by Steve Jobs in January 2007, fundamentally redefined what a mobile phone could be by combining a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator into a single touchscreen device with no physical keyboard, at a moment when most competing smartphones still relied heavily on physical buttons and styluses. The device's multi-touch capacitive touchscreen and its later App Store, launched in 2008, established the basic template — a touchscreen-first interface supporting a broad third-party app ecosystem — that virtually every subsequent smartphone from every manufacturer has followed in some form. The iPhone's success transformed Apple from primarily a computer company into the most valuable company in the world at various points over the following decade, and its annual release cycle became one of the most closely watched product launch events in the entire technology industry. The iPhone's combination of fundamentally redefining the smartphone category and establishing the touchscreen-and-app-store template followed by the entire industry has made it one of the most influential consumer technology products ever created.
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0 - 2Samsung Galaxy S
The Samsung Galaxy S series, launched in 2010, established Samsung as Apple's primary global smartphone competitor, built on Google's Android operating system and offering features like larger, higher-resolution displays that differentiated it from Apple's more conservative screen-size choices in the line's early years. Samsung's vertical integration, manufacturing its own displays, processors, and memory chips in addition to assembling the phones themselves, gave the Galaxy S line a genuine supply-chain and component-quality advantage over many competing Android manufacturers reliant on third-party suppliers. The Galaxy S line's introduction of larger-screened "phablet" form factors, and later folding-screen technology with the related Galaxy Fold line, reflected Samsung's willingness to push hardware innovation more aggressively than Apple's typically more incremental annual design changes. The Galaxy S series's combination of its role establishing Android as a genuine iPhone alternative and Samsung's aggressive hardware innovation has made it one of the most commercially significant smartphone lines in the industry's history.
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0 - 3BlackBerry
BlackBerry, made by Canadian company Research In Motion, dominated the smartphone market in the mid-2000s by combining a physical QWERTY keyboard with secure, reliable push email, making it the default choice for corporate executives and government officials before the iPhone's 2007 debut. The device's security architecture, including its own dedicated enterprise servers and encrypted messaging, made it a preferred device for governments and regulated industries in ways that later touchscreen-first competitors struggled to match for years afterward. BlackBerry's failure to adapt to the touchscreen, app-store-driven paradigm that the iPhone and Android established became one of the most widely studied case studies of technological disruption in modern business history, with the company's market share collapsing from industry dominance to near-irrelevance within roughly half a decade. BlackBerry's combination of its historic dominance of the pre-iPhone smartphone market and its subsequent dramatic disruption has made it one of the most instructive devices in the entire history of the smartphone industry.
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0 - 4Google Pixel
The Google Pixel line, launched in 2016, replaced Google's earlier Nexus program as the company's flagship self-branded Android device, built specifically to showcase Android software features and computational photography capabilities directly from the company that develops the operating system itself. The Pixel's computational photography, particularly its Night Sight low-light photo mode introduced in 2019, drew significant industry attention for achieving image quality through software processing that rivaled or exceeded phones with more expensive physical camera hardware. Google's development of its own custom Tensor system-on-chip beginning with the Pixel 6 in 2021 marked a significant strategic shift toward vertical hardware integration, mirroring Apple's own custom-silicon approach and reducing Google's reliance on third-party chipmakers like Qualcomm. The Google Pixel's combination of its software-first computational photography innovations and its role as Android's flagship reference device has made it one of the most influential lines in demonstrating what pure Android hardware can achieve.
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0 - 5Motorola RAZR
The original Motorola RAZR V3, launched in 2004, became one of the best-selling mobile phones in history, with over 130 million units sold, driven by its remarkably thin flip-phone design at a time when most competing phones were significantly bulkier. The RAZR's sleek aluminum construction and distinctive design made it a genuine fashion and status symbol independent of its features, a rare achievement for a mobile phone that predated the smartphone era's focus on software capability over industrial design. Motorola later revived the RAZR name in 2019 and beyond as a modern foldable smartphone, using flexible-screen technology to recreate the original's iconic flip form factor in a touchscreen device, directly appealing to nostalgia for the original's cultural impact. The Motorola RAZR's combination of its status as one of the best-selling phones ever made and its successful modern foldable revival has made it one of the most enduringly iconic phones in mobile phone history.
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0 - 6Nokia 3310
The Nokia 3310, released in 2000, became one of the most iconic mobile phones ever made, renowned for its exceptional battery life, physically rugged construction, and the addictive pre-installed game "Snake," which introduced millions of people to mobile gaming years before smartphones existed. The phone's reputation for near-indestructibility became a genuine internet meme and cultural touchstone, with its perceived toughness referenced repeatedly in comedy and popular culture long after the device itself became obsolete. Nokia sold well over 100 million units of the 3310, and its simple, focused feature set — calls, texts, and Snake, with minimal distractions — stood in sharp contrast to the multitasking-heavy design philosophy that would come to define smartphones less than a decade later. The Nokia 3310's combination of its record-setting sales and its lasting cultural status as a symbol of pre-smartphone-era mobile phone durability has made it one of the most beloved phones ever produced.
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