The first photo shared from a phone was a newborn, in 1997
· 2 min read · by Davyd Hruts
On June 11, 1997, software entrepreneur Philippe Kahn wired a digital camera and a flip phone to a laptop in a maternity ward in Santa Cruz, California, and sent a photo of his newborn daughter Sophie to about 2,000 friends and family within minutes. The image was 320 by 240 pixels. A single photo from a current iPhone has more than a hundred times as many pixels, which is the short answer to why phones fill up.
How the first phone photo was sent
There was no camera phone to buy in 1997. Kahn, who had founded the software company Borland, waited out his wife's labour by building one: a Casio QV digital camera, a Motorola StarTAC flip phone and a laptop, joined with a few cables and some code he wrote on the spot. When he took a picture, the laptop dialled his web server and uploaded it at 1,200 baud, and the server sent the link to everyone on his list.
Strictly, it was not the first image ever transmitted over a mobile network, but it is widely credited as the first photo shared instantly from a phone to many people at once. TIME later included it in its list of the 100 most influential photos. Kahn went on to build the system behind some of the first camera phones sold in Japan and the US.
From 76,800 pixels to 48 million
The 1997 photo held 76,800 pixels. Everything since has grown by orders of magnitude, and the phone's storage has to hold all of it.
| Image | Pixels | Typical file size |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 phone photo, 320 x 240 | 0.08 million | a few kilobytes |
| iPhone photo, 12 MP HEIC | 12 million | about 1.5 to 3 MB |
| iPhone photo, 48 MP HEIC | 48 million | about 4 to 8 MB |
| 48 MP ProRAW photo | 48 million | about 50 to 75 MB |
| One minute of 4K video at 30 fps | 8.3 million per frame | about 170 MB |
File sizes vary with the scene: a busy street compresses worse than a blue sky. The pattern holds anyway. A few long 4K clips and RAW shots outweigh thousands of ordinary photos.
What this means for your iPhone today
Kahn sent one photo to two thousand people. Most of us now take thousands of photos that nobody else sees, and the phone keeps every one at full size. When storage runs out, the cause is rarely the number of photos. It is the weight of a small number of them.
- Open Settings, General, iPhone Storage and check whether Photos is at the top.
- In the Photos app, open Media Types, Videos, and look at the longest clips first.
- Delete the clips you will never watch, and for the ones you want to keep, save a 1080p copy instead of the 4K original.
- Empty Recently Deleted at the end, or the space stays taken for 30 days.
Questions
What was the first photo sent from a mobile phone?
The photo most often credited is Philippe Kahn's picture of his newborn daughter Sophie, shared from a phone on June 11, 1997 to about 2,000 people. It was 320 by 240 pixels.
How big is a photo from a modern iPhone?
A 12 megapixel HEIC photo is usually 1.5 to 3 MB, a 48 megapixel HEIC 4 to 8 MB, and a 48 megapixel ProRAW photo 50 to 75 MB. One minute of 4K video at 30 fps is about 170 MB.
Why is my iPhone full if I do not have that many photos?
Usually because of video. A handful of long 4K clips can take more space than thousands of photos. Sort videos by length or size and start there.
