There’s no doubt that the iPhone has revolutionized the mobile industry or more precisely, the smartphone market. We’ve heard this line over and over but if you think about it, it’s true! Year after year, summer after summer, the brilliant Steve Jobs has managed to capture and retain an ever so loyal audience and customer base; many of whom are willing to spend hours waiting in line to own “the new iPhone” – the same day it comes out.

This past June, Apple sold over 1.5 million iPhone 4’s on launch day. Pretty impressive if you ask me!

On June 29, 2007 I was in Boston, MA. My father had asked me to join him there for a week to take my twin brothers (actually half-brothers) around and visit some schools – and since I had lived there for almost 9 years, what better person to play the city/college tour guide?!

We were on our way back to the hotel from a guided campus tour of Babson (I think) when I realized that today was the big day! To make a long story short, I got yelled at for popping an unexpected U-turn on the freeway to go back to Cingular (now AT&T) to get the much talked about iPhone. When I finally got to the counter, I was told it was locked and that it wouldn’t work abroad. So of course I ended up paying twice the price for it (for an unlocked version) a few weeks later in Lebanon.

Well, that was my trip down memory lane and my story with the first iPhone. And although I currently use Blackberry, I’m highly considering the iPhone 4 – even though my good friend at Google keeps trying to convince me to switch to an Android device ;).

But enough with the personal bla bla and back to the main attraction…

I came across this very recent and fantastic infographic by @shanesnow of Mashable about the history of the iPhone – from 2007 till today. Not only does it portray the various devices but also the global contexts in which each new generation was introduced.

Do you have any iPhone stories? Good or bad – feel free to share your own iPhone recollections in the comments :).

* Note: Just a small inaccuracy here - the war between Lebanon (the Hezbollah not the Lebanese army) and Israel was in the summer of 2006 not 2007. But this small fact has nothing to do with iPhone's and the fact that this is still an awesome infographic - regardless :)!