When Apple released its iPhone in January 2007, it changed smartphones forever. Competitors who were able to adapt to the new normal, like Samsung, have thrived, while others who moved too slow, like BlackBerry and Nokia, have had a tougher time.
Google, owner and operator of the Android platform, was one of the first to recognize just how important the iPhone was, a new book reveals. Google engineer Chris DeSalvo says as soon as Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone to the world, he knew the Android team would need to "start over," according to Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein, which was excerpted in The Atlantic.
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“What we had suddenly looked just so... '90s,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”
For the six months before the iPhone unveiling, DeSalvo, Android chief Andy Rubin and the rest of the Android team had been working on the platforms prototype phone. A launch was planned for the end of 2007. All of those plans were scrapped in the wake of the iPhone. All of those plans were scrapped in the wake of the iPhone.
While the software for the prototype had many of the hallmarks of what we now know as Android — mainly cloud connectivity and multitasking — the phone itself was "ugly," the book says. It looked more like a BlackBerry than the sleek piece of metal and glass that Steve Jobs had just unveiled.
The Android team quickly switched gears to focus on a phone with a touchscreen, which would eventually become the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1 in the U.S.A.). The launch was pushed back to fall 2008, months after the second-generation iPhone would go on sale, the iPhone 3G.
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