The Original Google Phone

If you want a good laugh, listen to someone telling you about how Google was never influenced by the design of Apple’s iPhone, and that they came up with their own, fresh UI design. Then, once you’re done wiping away a tear of hilarity, take a look at the original “Google Phone” and notice all the ways in which it doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever seen from them since the iPhone appeared.

According to The Verge, the original Google concept for a phone was quite different from the Android inventions that we  have since come to associate with “Google Phone”. It’s kind of funny to imagine that this was where Google was thinking the future would lead:

Exact specs for those first concepts aren’t detailed, but Google does spell out what it had in mind for the least common denominator across Android devices. An ARMv9 processor of at least 200MHz, GSM (3G preferred), 64MB of RAM and ROM, miniSD (yes, mini, not micro) external storage, a 2-megapixel camera with a dedicated shutter button, USB support, Bluetooth 1.2, and a QVGA display with at least 16-bit color support — a far cry from today’s 720p screens. At that time, touchscreen support wasn’t a requirement — in fact, the baseline specs required two soft menu keys, indicating that touchscreens weren’t really in the plan at all. Optionally, phones could also include a QWERTY keyboard (as the G1 did), Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, a “secondary display,” Wi-Fi, GPS, and hardware graphics acceleration.

A lot of the important stuff was in there (Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth), some questionable stuff (a 2 megapixel camera) and some stuff that just makes you laugh (16-bit color support?). Obviously, Google took a huge leap forward and, in doing so, launched far away from this design and left it where it belongs: In the concept stage.

Source: The Verge

Corey has been been a tech journalist with a focus on Apple since 1998 and has written for The Loop, MacHome magazine, and as games contributor for The Mac Bible, and co-hosts the iGame Radio Podcast. He works as a corporate consultant and professional musician in Ottawa, Ontario.