The secret history of the iPhone is explored in this excellent text: THE ONE DEVICE by Brian Merchant. Booklist description: "a fascinating and often surprising look" and Merchant's text is certainly full of facts and personal observations.

There's a related and recent Longreads article, too, called: "A Sociology of the Smartphone" which says in part, "it appeared in our lives so suddenly and totally that the scale and force of the changes it has occasioned have largely receded from conscious awareness."

To get a sense of how quickly the iPhone was adopted, glance at the accompanying chart which is part of an Wall Street Journal article by Tripp Mickle called "How iPhone Decade Reshaped Apple."

THE ONE DEVICE explores the history of wireless networks and points to the many inventors, innovators and workers who contributed to this technology. Merchant goes on to talk about the period between 2004 and 2007 when the iPhone was a secret project at Apple. He frames this in part by quoting one source who says, "Apple is best when it's fixing the things that people hate." He continues with chapters on speech recognition (Siri) and product sourcing and manufacturing. This book is written in an engaging way which will appeal to many iPhone users, especially the future engineers, programmers, and entrepreneurs among them. I am looking forward to discussing it with our students.

Links in the blog post:
https://longreads.com/2017/06/13/a-sociology-of-the-smartphone/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/among-the-iphones-biggest-transformations-apple-itself-1497951003