iPhone

In 2019 Apple began developing satellites so that the iPhone could skip wireless carriers.[296]

24 different iPhone models have been produced. The models in bold are current flagship devices:

Current devices

Past devices

Apple has filed more than 200 related to the technology behind the iPhone.

LG Electronics claimed the design of the iPhone was copied from the . Woo-Young Kwak, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center, said at a press conference: "we consider that Apple copied Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006."

On September 3, 1993, filed for the U.S. trademark "I PHONE" "I Phone" was registered in March 1998, Since then, the I PHONE mark had been abandoned. and "computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks" (1996 filing).[304]

In 2000, Infogear filed an infringement claim against the owners of the iPhones.com domain name. In September 2000, Cisco Systems settled with the owners of iPhones.com and allowed the owners to keep the iPhones.com domain name along with intellectual property rights to use any designation of the iPhones.com domain name for the sale of cellular phones, cellular phones with Internet access (WAP PHONES), handheld PDAs, storage devices, computer equipment (hardware/software), and digital cameras (hardware/software). The intellectual property rights were granted to the owners of the iPhones.com domain name by Cisco Systems in September 2000.

In October 2002, Apple applied for the "iPhone" trademark in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and the European Union. A Canadian application followed in October 2004, and a New Zealand application in September 2006. As of October 2006, only the Singapore and Australian applications had been granted.

In September 2006, a company called Ocean Telecom Services applied for an "iPhone" trademark in the United States, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, following a filing in Trinidad and Tobago. The Canadian application was opposed in August 2005, by a Canadian company called who themselves applied for the trademark three months later. Comwave has been selling VoIP devices called iPhone since 2004.[306]

Shortly after Steve Jobs' January 9, 2007 announcement that Apple would be selling a product called iPhone in June 2007, Cisco issued a statement that it had been negotiating trademark licensing with Apple and expected Apple to agree to the final documents that had been submitted the night before. In February 2007, Cisco claimed that the trademark lawsuit was a "minor skirmish" that was not about money, but about interoperability.[311]

On February 2, 2007, Apple and Cisco announced that they had agreed to temporarily suspend litigation while they held settlement talks, in exchange for "exploring interoperability" between their security, consumer, and business communications products.[314]

On October 22, 2009, filed a lawsuit against Apple for infringement of its GSM, UMTS and WLAN patents. Nokia alleges that Apple has been violating ten Nokia patents since the iPhone initial release.[315]

In December 2010, reported that some iPhone and users were suing because some applications were passing user information to third-party advertisers without permission. Some makers of the applications such as Textplus4, , , , Talking Tom Cat and Pumpkin Maker have also been named as co-defendants in the lawsuit.[316]

In August 2012, Apple won a in the U.S. against , the world's largest maker of smartphones; reversed the decision that awarded nearly $400 million to Apple and returned the case to Federal Circuit court to define the appropriate legal standard to define "article of manufacture" because it is not the smartphone itself but could be just the case and screen to which the design patents relate.[318]

In March 2013, an Apple patent for a wraparound display was revealed.[319]

Around April 20, 2011, a file on the iPhone and other iOS devices was widely discussed in the media. It was alleged that the file, labeled "consolidated.db", constantly stores the iPhone user's movement by approximating geographic locations calculated by , a technology proven to be inaccurate at times. and may contain almost a year's worth of data. Previous versions of iOS stored similar information in a file called "h-cells.plist".[323]

discovered that the data is transmitted to Apple twice a day and postulate that Apple is using the information to construct their global location database similar to the ones constructed by Google and through . "Latitude" application, which performs a similar task on phones, the file is not dependent upon signing a specific or even the user's knowledge, but it is stated in the 15,200 word-long of the iPhone that "Apple and [their] partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of [the user's] Apple computer or device".[325]

The file is also automatically copied onto the user's computer once synchronized with the iPhone. An named "iPhoneTracker", which turns the data stored in the file into a visual map, was made available to the public in April 2011. the phone, it can be encrypted.[327]

Apple gave an official response on their web site on April 27, 2011, and others. Apple clarified that the data is a small portion of their crowd-sourced location database cache of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone for making location services faster than with only GPS, therefore the data does not represent the locations of the iPhone. The volume of data retained was an error. Apple issued an update for iOS (version , or for the CDMA iPhone 4) which reduced the size of the cache, stopped it being backed up to iTunes, and erased it entirely whenever location services were turned off.

The "Frequent Locations" feature found in "Settings" under "Location Services" stores commonly visited locations locally on the device.

It was revealed as a part of the that the American and British intelligence agencies, the (NSA) and the (GCHQ) have access to the user data in iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Android phones, respectively. They can read almost all smartphone information, including SMS, location, emails, and notes.[332]

According to an article in titled "Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A.", Apple has developed a new encryption method for iOS 8, described as "so deep that Apple could no longer comply with government warrants asking for customer information to be extracted from devices."[333]

Throughout 2015, prosecutors in the United States argued for the U.S. government to be able to compel decryption of iPhone contents. After the , the recovered an that was issued to one of the shooters by his employer, and backups of that phone from a month and a half before the shooting. (The shooters had destroyed their personal phones.) The U.S. government attempted to obtain a court order under the compelling Apple to produce an file that would allow investigators to the device passcode. responded on the company's website, outlining a need for encryption, arguing that if they produce a for one device, it would inevitably be used to compromise the privacy of other iPhone users. See .

The GrayKey, manufactured by , can unlock iPhones, even if they are disabled. As a countermeasure, Apple implemented USB Restricted Mode.[345]