Have you ever wondered what kind of phones we would have today if Apple didn’t introduce the iPhone to the world? Thanks to new information from the co-founder of AndroidRich Minder, we have an answer to that.
miner wrote a twitter thread on Monday night calling out a mistake made in an article published byBusiness Insider. He said that in 2005, Google and Android, the latter of which was acquired by the former company at the time, were worried about Microsoft dominating mobile phones in the same way that it dominated PCs with the launch of Windows Mobile. In response, Android launched Sooner and Dream, two phones that would act like “little computers in your pocket, expanding access and enriching your services with location.”
All along we were working on 2 phones, Sooner, more blackberry-like & Dream, touch screen 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
Miner shared a photo of the render of the Dream, which would eventually become known as the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream. The interesting thing is that this version of the G1 was created five months before the launch of the iPhone, and it shows a very different looking phone compared to the final version of the G1. The G1 here shows off a touch screen that slides up to reveal a green QWERTY keyboard with a curve on the side.
Unfortunately, Android was forced to cancel the Sooner phone after the iPhone launched in 2007. As for the G1, Miner said the company slightly changed its design to “appease” Steve Jobs, who wasn’t too happy about Android competing. with Apple.
The final redesign for the G1 became T-Mobile’s exclusive HTC smartphone, and the first Android smartphone on the market, called HTC Dream (or T-Mobile G1, depending on where you live), which launched in September 2008. It got rid of the giant wheel button on the right and replaced it with a smaller trackball in the middle between the call buttons, start, return and end. The slider retained the touchscreen, but was slightly flatter than the original design, and the QWERTY keyboard buttons jutted out a bit more.
The HTC Dream was sold outside the United States in white, while the T-Mobile G1 came in black. While the original design of the G1 made it look more futuristic, the final design was more practical while retaining the sideways curve. The Dream was discontinued in 2010.
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