Rich Miner, one of the creators of the Android operating system, posted on Twitter an image of the prototype of the first Android smartphone in a folded and unfolded state. It was planned to swipe the screen of the device, revealing a physical QWERTY keyboard. At the same time, on the right side of the screen should be buttons “Back”, “Home”, “Accept call” and “End call”. In addition, the prototype had a scroll wheel.

“We worked on two models in 2005: Sooner and Dream. In the first case we were inspired by Blackberry devices, the second was to get a touchscreen. After the first iPhone was released, we left Soon and focused on Dream,” said Rich Miner.

rich miner AdditionalThis resulted in Google creating the Google G1 smartphone, which is very similar to the Dream prototype. He added that these images were made five months before the first iPhone was released. Expressing that iPhone and Dream were developed in parallel in complete secrecy, he added that they had to make some changes because of Steve Jobs.

Yes, Jobs was unhappy and since Apple is an important partner, we made minor changes to please him prior to launch. It’s wrong to say we cheated on Apple. Smartphones were developed in parallel. The similarities are explained by the same technologies and limitations. rich miner