The original team Androidu spent the past weekend and Monday dispelling some misconceptions about the creation of today's most widespread mobile operating system, especially in relation to the iPhone. Within that co-creator Androidu Rich Miner shared a render of the Google G1 device, which preceded the first iPhone.
The render shows how the Google G1 (or HTC Dream or T-Mobile G1) looked five months before the unveiling of the first iPhone (that is, in the summer of 2006). It was a slide-out phone with a full QWERTY keyboard with an almost neon shade of green that seemed to flow out when closed. The Google logo at the top left is also green, as are the two physical buttons for email and back — the latter perhaps just for faster symbol input.
Gallery
At the very bottom are four buttons for answer call, reject call, home and back. To the right of these is a circular ring which, Miner explained, was "one of the options to enter with directional movement and push the center to select, not rotate".
All along we were working on 2 phones, Sooner, more blackberry-like & Dream, touchscreen based. After the iPhone launch we did cancel Sooner to focus on Dream (eventually the Google G1) but its design changed little from this rendering made 5 months before the iPhone launched. pic.twitter.com/lC8m0WolgE
— Rich Miner (@richminer) October 31, 2022
When Google and HTC launched the device two years later, it looked quite different. A fifth ("menu") and a trackball have been added to the aforementioned four buttons. Another noticeable change was the slight curvature of the lower part towards the front and the removal of the mentioned ring.
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Meanwhile, he gave the original team Androidu clearly that Android it was always intended to compete with Microsoft, not Apple. Specifically, he was supposed to compete with the system Windows Mobile. Miner added that Google is on Android and Internet browsers (Chrome) he viewed as something that could prevent Microsoft from gaining dominance in the software field. How it all turned out, but we already know. Mobile Windows failed and cleared the field, Android it is the most widespread mobile system.
