I owned the first Android phone in an iPhone world – and it was amazing

I have a secret pride. Android is 10 years old This week, I was one of the first in the world to use it. In fact, the very first Android phone was also my first smartphone.

This may not seem like a big deal now, Android phones are literally everywhere. But in 2008, when the T-Mobile G1 came out (it was known as HTC Dream in some parts of the world), the G1 and Google's mobile platform were crazy alternative to the new iPhone world order.

At the time, using a T-Mobile G1 and me was different. The iPhone was the first modern smartphone, and everyone wanted one. It was a status symbol. He sold in mass. A year after being released, I began to feel the inevitable appeal for the purchase of a smartphone. But not the "magic" iPhone.

Apple is in the walled gardens and Android has promised the freedom to tinker, as I did on my Windows PC. AT & T had the exclusivity of the iPhone, and I was a long-time subscriber of T-Mobile, at the time when phone contracts still mattered. With the cost of the two-year contract required by each operator, the G1 on T-Mobile was much cheaper than the iPhone on AT & T.

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From the moment I took the G1 bronze in the T-Mobile shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I was hooked.

This thing was extremely geek, the antithesis of the iPhone slender in many ways: big and thick, with a strange "chin" (kind, for me) that interrupted the typical rectangular profile. It had all the extras: a microSD slot for expandable memory, a little clickable trackball in the middle of the chin for navigation and selection, real dedicated buttons for Home, Back and Menu, and even more buttons dedicated a photo. And he said "Google" on the back.

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Of course, the G1 also had a touch screen, but the best was the sliding physical keyboard. I really felt superior to iPhones with this thing. Their tiny virtual keyboards, which occupied half of the screen, seemed incredibly slow and prone to error, compared to the powerful, fully backlit five-line QWERTY touch console (with dedicated numeric keys!) That was revealed when I removed the screen G1.

I loved the automatic reorientation of the screen in landscape mode when I opened the keyboard. I loved the substantial and satisfying "snick" sound that it produced when it went into action. I even liked the fact that it made the phone physically bigger, like a miniature computer. At the time, this seemed like the ultimate gadget, and in many ways it was the case. Having never owned a smartphone before, I've been stunned by its usefulness, its camera, its GPS capabilities and its step-by-step navigation, the sheer complexity of a small portable case.

Gmail worked great on my phone, with all the features like tagging and archiving that I had on the PC. I also liked the home screen widgets, like the Google search bar, and the ability to view the top of the screen for notifications, like new ones. texts and e-mails, was excellent.

Read also: The T-Mobile G1 looked almost like a BlackBerry

Taking out my bulky phone to make calls or typing texts occasionally has sparked curious looks from people, but it was in New York and everyone knew iPhones and BlackBerries. Most people did not seem to notice or care.

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I played a lot of games on the G1, from Bonsai Blast to Doom via Chrono Trigger, and the keyboard was actually useful on a lot of them. At the time, only on-screen games had awkward controls that covered the screen, but some games for the G1 mapped the controls to the buttons, just like a computer keyboard, which left the entire screen for the game itself. I could shoot with the space bar and use WASD to move.

I remember that the universe of the Android application has always felt the step behind Apple, especially at the beginning. Applications for the system were rare at the time, and my iPhone friends had apps and games (like Angry Birds) that I did not have. I justified the lack by telling myself that the majority of the stuff I wanted to do, like reading news articles and forums, I could do on the phone browser.

Eventually, I overtook the T-Mobile G1 and switched to another larger Android phone, the Samsung Vibrant. This was the T-Mobile variant of the very first Galaxy S phone, and it overtook the old G1 with a larger and nicer OLED display – but no keyboard. At that time, I had come to the freshness of the virtual keyboard on a touch screen, and thanks to autofill and predictive text suggestions, it was faster than typing on my old G1.

Google's first Android phone was an excellent phone, period. This triggered my allegiance to Android and paved the way for even larger and better phones like the Vibrant. It's the openness of Google that gave Samsung the latitude to create smart and capable phones, like the Galaxy Note 9.

I would probably never want a physical phone keyboard, but thanks to the T-Mobile G1's good start, I probably will not want an iPhone either.