The home screen in 2007.mobile, 4:11 PM. Image: 2007.mobile.
The first iPhone’s software, as shipped, running in a browser tab: slide to unlock, tap an icon, press the round Home button.
2007.mobile is a project by Kelindi, a software designer and builder in Toronto. It runs iPhone OS 1.0 on a 320 by 480 canvas inside a phone-shaped frame, with a WebAssembly emulator doing the work. The page calls it genuine iPhone OS 1.0, and the files it downloads carry the build number 1A543a.
What makes it more than a screenshot is how physical it is. The side buttons work: sleep, volume up and down, and the silent switch. On a keyboard, Esc or H is Home, P is sleep, M is silent. Drag to scroll, and slide to unlock when it wakes. Sound begins after your first tap.
Then there is the software itself, with names from a different era. What is now Music is the iPod, Messages is Text, and the dock holds Phone, Mail, Safari and iPod. There is no App Store here, because there was no App Store then: Wikipedia notes that iPhone OS 1 shipped without an app store or a developer kit, and Apple pointed developers to web apps in Safari.
It is also built like something you might come back to. Save keeps a checkpoint in your browser. Export downloads a backup file, Import restores one, and Reset starts over from the supplied phone state. Keep offline stores the phone for visits without a connection. The starting phone has about 6 MB of free storage, which is a period detail in itself.
The limits are stated on the page. It says hardware and app support are still being developed, and internet access, cellular service and the camera are not yet available. Safari opens but cannot reach the web. OSXDaily, which surfaced it, reports that the other built-in apps work, and the maker called the project a work in progress.
One question the site leaves open: where the OS image comes from. The files are hosted on a separate file host, and the site does not say how Apple’s software was obtained or whether it is licensed. It is a toy built on Apple’s code, and it may not be there forever. Export your backup if you get attached to your phone.