The first smartphone with Android celebrates its 13th birthday. What did he offer?

It’s been 13 years since the first Android device, the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, came into the world of smartphones. Since then, much has changed not only in hardware, but also in the operating system itself. The Android Police portal went back in time and remembered what this smartphone had to offer.

HTC Dream was not thwarted by specifications, but by a new operating system

The specifications of the device were acceptable for 2008, but today they would not be able to cope. The phone was powered by a Qualcomm MSM7201A processor with a single ARM11 core running at an incredible 528 MHz along with an Adreno 130 graphics processor.

It also had 192 MB of RAM and only 256 MB of internal storage (which could be expanded with a microSD card), supported 3G, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi and charged via a mini (non-micro) USB port. In one thing, however, he was ahead of his time, as he did not have a 3.5 mm jack. It also offered a QWERTY keyboard, which made it a large (117.7 x 55.7 x 17.1 mm) and relatively heavy (158 g) device, having only a 3.2 ″ TFT display.

However, the main advantage of the model was not its specifications, but the new system on which it ran. Although Android 1.0 had many shortcomings and peculiarities, it gave the world an idea of ​​what would come in the future.

Apple got strong competition

Compared to its main competitor, iOS (then known as the iPhone OS), Android offered a customizable home screen, gadgets, a notification bar, and the ability to copy and paste text. However, there was a lack of support for features we take for granted today, such as live wallpapers, real-time navigation, speech-to-text conversion, and zooming.

The big advantage of the system was that it was open-source, thanks to which other manufacturers could use it as well. It put a lot of pressure on Apple, and Steve Jobs promised to destroy Android before his death. A few years later, however, it became a full-fledged and advanced operating system.

Android did not become mainstream until a few years later

The HTC Dream was a success, with T-Mobile announcing in April 2009 that up to one million units had been sold. However, Android did not become mainstream until the arrival of the Motorola Droid smartphone in 2009, from which 250,000 units were sold in the first week, and the Samsung Galaxy S model in 2010.

So we’ve come a long way in the last decade, and Android continues to improve. We will soon see a stable version of the 12th edition of this system.