That being said, TIME has recently published their list of the 50 Most Influential Gadgets Of All Time, and guess who made the top of the list? In case it wasn’t already obvious in the title, Apple’s iPhone topped the list as the most influential gadget of all time, beating out the likes of other electronic gadgets like the Sony Walkman (which placed fourth), and the iPod (which placed 9th) which we think acted as a precursor to the iPhone.
According to TIME, they attribute the iPhone as shaping the landscape of the smartphone industry that we know today. They acknowledge that smartphones have been around before the iPhone (think the Palm Treo), “but none came together as accessibly and beautifully as the iPhone. Apple’s device ushered in a new era of flat, touchscreen phones with buttons that appeared on screen as you needed them, replacing the chunkier phones with slide-out keyboards and static buttons.”
Other gadgets that made the list include the Philips VCR, the Atari 2600, the NES gaming console, the Game Boy, Motorola’s Bravo Pager, the original Motorola Droid, the Polaroid camera, Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, TiVo, the original Sony PlayStation, the Nokia 3210 (oddly enough no mention of the fabled Nokia 3310), and Google Glass, just to name a few.