Oh, look – a proper smartphone OS. Not like the rubbish system iPhone users have.
Well, arguments still rage about what impact the iPhone had on Android. We know it began as a camera OS, before pivoting to phones and being swallowed up by Google. There’s evidence to suggest early iterations were BlackBerry-flavoured… but Android fans claim it was always designed for multiple input types, and Google long had versions running on keyboard phones as well as touchscreen devices. Which might be why the first Android phone tried to give us both.
The HTC Dream! What a masterpiece. It even had a real keyboard.
It really did. Look up the term ‘hedging your bets’ in a dictionary and there’s a photo of the HTC Dream. Instead of the iPhone’s sleek, opinionated form, HTC gave us a phone with an angled chin and a trackball. Android 1.0 provided a glimpse of what was to come… but having to turn the Dream and slide up the screen to type was maddening. Still, because Google didn’t care about ownership of everything, the Open Handset Alliance meant the Dream was soon joined by a host of rivals, each offering their own spin on what an Android phone could be.
A smart move by Google, making Android the Windows of smartphones.
Doubly so, given that Microsoft itself didn’t fully respond until the Windows Phone 7 in 2010 – which is a bit like turning up to a sprint race in your fanciest running shoes, only to realise your two rivals have long since headed to a bar to have piles of cash thrown at them. And it all worked out rather well for Google, with Android blazing past iOS in mobile market share in 2012, and never looking back since. Well, apart from when it wants to pilfer a few more choice features from Apple’s OS. The more things change…