The iPhone 3GS (2009) was the moment Apple's smartphone ambitions became undeniable — the "S" stood for Speed, and the jump from the 3G felt generational. Its 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 and PowerVR SGX535 GPU powered the first iPhone to shoot video, and it launched alongside iOS 3, which finally brought copy and paste, MMS, and push notifications to the platform. Voice Control was a quiet foreshadowing of Siri two years later. At $99 on contract it was the first iPhone accessible to the mass market, and it sold so well Apple kept it on shelves until 2012 — cementing the "S-year" upgrade cadence that would define the product line for over a decade.

• EveryMac