Five years ago today, I left work soon after lunch and went to a local AT&T store to get a brand new iPhone, Apple’s first entry in the smartphone market. (I didn’t work in the technology journalism industry then and I wasn’t entirely truthful with my boss at that time about my reason for leaving early – I knew getting in line to buy a cell phone was not going to be acceptable). I was so excited to get my hands on it and immediately found it to be an improvement compared to the Treo 680 I had at that time.

Here’s a portion of what I posted about my purchase experience on my old blog on July 1, 2007 (I think I’ve since toned down my fangirl exuberance, at least a little):

By George, I’ve got it! My iPhone, that is. I waited in line for 2 hours at a local AT&T store (I thought an AT&T store would be less crazy than a local Apple store, and from what I’ve read, I was right) and picked up one of the last 8GB models they had. Luckily, I had no problems whatsoever activating it – within 3 minutes of plugging it into my Mac (I had downloaded iTunes 7.3 before I went to the store so I would be prepared to sync it immediately later), the SIM card in my Treo was deactivated and my iPhone was active. Syncing did take a long time the first time around, though I’m not sure exactly how much time since I left it alone after a few minutes and went to grab some dinner.

The iPhone is simply amazing and I absolutely love it so far. I’m getting some good use in and am working on my Treo 680 v. iPhone review each day. Already, I know that there a few things I miss from my Treo. One thing is searching for contacts via the keyboard – on the iPhone, you can only search by scrolling through all names directly or by using the alphabet shortcut visible on the right side. Another thing is to-do items. However, rumor has it that to-do’s may be in a software update when Leopard is released (along with an associated application on the Mac for Notes syncing). If this is the case, it looks like I’m going to be upgrading to Leopard sooner after it’s released rather than later.

Looking back at that post on my old site also reminds me that I’ve been blogging for more than five years now. It’s been an eventful five years, especially for Apple fans.

I don’t want to wax too nostalgic about a device that has changed so much for me but if you’re an iPhone owner, you probably already know what this is like. I’m definitely looking forward to the next five years of the iPhone and innovation in general in the consumer technology space.