A decade later, here is my original iPhone review

In June 2007, I was one of just four journalists who got to review the brand new iPhone ahead of all others--Walt Mossberg, then of the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue, then of the New York Times, and Steven Levy, then of Newsweek, were the other three. Kara Swisher later put us all on "Mount Techmore" in a post in All Things D.

I wrote in my original review that Apple had delivered a "prodigy--a slender fashion phone, a slick iPod, and an Internet experience unlike any before it on a mobile handset." It was, I said, not perfect, but "worthy of the hype."

And what hype there was. Steve Jobs had famously announced this bold new smartphone the previous January in San Francisco at MacWorld, an event that overlapped with the Consumer Electronics Show taking place some 550 miles away in San Francisco where I was. I remember my editor at the time asking me what I had seen at CES. "Not much," I replied, because I was mostly writing about the iPhone from my hotel room.

Apple supplied my review unit of the new iPhone more than a couple of weeks ahead of it going on sale. I was sworn to secrecy and could tell no one (besides my wife) that I had it, even some fellow USA TODAY staffers, not to mention friends and relatives. I remained mum and resisted all pressure. I recall walking away when one overly inquisitive neighbor tried to get me to empty my pockets at a carnival in my New Jersey town.

When my review, available here, finally did hit two days before the phone went on sale, I was never more popular. I went on TV and radio, and joked that if I only had the phone back in high school....

After selling more than 1 billion iPhones in the ensuing ten years, I only wonder if we'll ever see such a frenzied tech launch again?

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter