What Was Your First Smartphone App?
What was your first smartphone? I had an iPhone 3GS, a phone with no selfie camera, no HD display, no flash. What he could do was launch applications… lots of applications. The slogan reads: ” There’s an app for that .” Whether you’re an iOS or Android team, you no doubt now own a smartphone, which means that one day, many years ago, you downloaded the app for the first time. But what application?
As it turns out, it’s very easy to go back in time and see which app was downloaded first (assuming you haven’t changed accounts over the years). On iPhone, open the App Store, tap your profile in the top right corner, select Purchased , then tap My Purchases . On Android, open the Play Store, tap your profile, then go to Payments & Subscriptions > Budget & History > Purchase History.
Now start scrolling: if you’ve had an Apple ID or Google account for a while, you probably have a long list of apps in your purchase history. (I’m curious how many there are in mine, but I don’t have the patience to count them all.) Eventually, you’ll get to the bottom of the list, where you’ll find your first app.
Apparently the first app I ever downloaded on my current Apple account is a game called Siege Hero , which I installed on August 19, 2011. -ever, I will need to dig out those old login credentials and repeat the process.
You might be surprised to see how many of these old apps are still available for download (apparently meme generators didn’t survive). However, you won’t only see apps that are still active, at least on iOS. If an app has since left us, you’ll still see it in your list, but the download icon will be greyed out and if you click on it, you’ll get an App Store error message. Alas, I will never again encounter gems like Stupidity 2 , What’s My IQ?™ or Hardest Game Ever – 0.02s .
So what was your first app? Let me know in the comments. Was it a game? Working application? Was it a freebie or did you pay for it? Depending on how long you’ve had the account, I expect to see a lot of Temple Run and Instagram, but maybe also Tap Tap Revolution or iBeer . Remember that app that was just a big battery indicator? They couldn’t all be winners.