[ad_1]
Over the past week, bloggers have been posting thoughts on Android because we just spent the 10th anniversary of the T-Mobile G1 (AKA, the HTC Dream or colloquially the "G phone") revelation. , the first commercial device of the platform. Many people, including this blogger here, basically had the same idea: get hold of the device (I took mine to T-Mobile for activation and they were all "nah") take pictures or videos, the day. Let me tell you something about the time: Android sucked.
Even then, I do not think anyone was wrong about what was happening with Android or the T-Mobile G1. The concept of open source alternative to the iPhone was attractive, but the hardware and software were almost unusable. The phone conveyed an idea hardly conceived and still less fully understood. Although its Sidekick-style sliding keyboard is very satisfying, the hardware design represents a strange layover gadget between the BlackBerry and the modern smartphone: why would you need a trackball if you have a touch screen? Why no headphone jack? How am I supposed to use my right hand to tap on the QWERTY keyboard with the "chin" of the phone across?
But even if you could go beyond the odd design of the device, the operating system and the user interface were rudimentary and frustrating. Despite some innovative ideas that would become commonplace – such as a pop-up notification window – the device did not have multitouch input, so skip common gestures like pinch to zoom. To be a "Google phone", it lacked a lot of first class applications that people would have liked and the market was essentially sorry. Browse some of the old videos about Android Developer Channel and you will see how simple Android was for YEARS after its initial release.
In a way, it 's not quite right to make fun of the toughness of Android early on. The iPhone and iOS were not fully cooked on their first delivery. The first iPhone did not have an app store! But they had some varnish that seemed to represent complete products.
And as others have pointed out, the goal of Android in the beginning was not to be the operating system of choice for every living human being. In fact, at the beginning of its development, Apple and its iPhone were not even visible. Google feared that Microsoft and Windows dominate the space of mobile devices. So, if the T-Mobile G1 is not a beautiful device that invites privacy, it's because it was not meant to be. It was a professional gadget and productivity.
Earlier this year, we took a bigger step than the 10th anniversary of the G1: five years of good Android phones that a rational and rational person would choose to buy instead of an iPhone. In my opinion, the first viable Android alternatives to the iPhone were the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One (M7), both announced in March 2013. Android Jelly Bean, the platform used by these devices, was the first really usable iteration of the platform.
There is room for discussion here! You can send me your memories of your Honeycomb tablet (or place them politely in the comments). I will give you the nostalgia for devices like the Nexus 4 or even the GSIII, which at least look like quality, even if they had major flaws. But the room for maneuver only goes back so far; It remains that for many years after its initial release, Android was a compromise to which people have subscribed for various reasons, be it compatibility with operators (the iPhone was an exclusive AT & T for years) , financial (you could get a relatively cheap early), or just an old adept nerd alternative tech. (And to be honest, Android device manufacturers sold a ton of phones before they were good.)
In a few minutes, towards the end of the day, I took all the pictures of this message on a Google Pixel 2, a phone that inherits in many ways the legacy of this old T-Mobile G1 . It was almost too easy to get images as beautiful as those of the Olympus mirrorless camera on my desk. Do I need to say it? I can not believe how much we arrived in 10 years!
Source link
