Gadgetory

so Android it's been around for about 10 years now and it all started with the release of the t-mobile g1 back on September 23rd 2008 but here's a question why did Google bother making Android in the first place when you think about smart phone battles today you pretty much think of it as Android vs. iPhone and that's how it is but back before the iPhone heck even right after the iPhone came out the world looks a whole lot different phones were actually relatively small they fit in the palm of your hand and most of them didn't have touch displays if you did have a smart phone chances are you were either NIT you worked on Wall Street or you were a huge nerd like me anyway here's how things look back in 2007 blackberry was kind of the king because its devices were simple they were fast and they had super long battery life palm was running out the clock on Palm OS and trying to figure out what I was gonna do next Nokia was doing some Symbian stuff and basically everybody else was making Windows Mobile devices which went from Pocket PC to Windows Mobile when Microsoft started focusing more on phones but this was before Windows Phone existed anyway the point is Microsoft was trying to replicate the Windows PC business model but with phones so it partnered with Samsung and Motorola and HP and HTC and a bunch of other smaller manufacturers and a lot of these smartphones felt like overgrown PDAs with antennas tech out of them but that was starting to change by the time the iPhone rolled around this right here this is the Moto Q the original it ran Windows Mobile and it came out in 2006 now I'm not saying that this was the best smartphone back then but it was actually in the running and there are some really cool things about it it's got this backlit QWERTY keyboard here it's got this dope jog dial and it was one of the phones that made people realize that something nerdy like a smart phone could actually be accessible to more people anyway this thing this kind of gadget II dorky-looking phone right here or more specifically phones that are just like it they were the thing that made Google think that it needed to do Android okay so why do we know that well let's start with some I don't know circumstantial evidence take a look at this thing this is the sooner it was the very first prototype of an Android phone it looks kind of familiar doesn't it it looks kind of like the Moto QA or kind of like this other phone which came out a little bit later it's the trio pro fun fact I heard that one palm was in really bad places it went to HTC and basically took something HTC had already been developing and had them turned it into this Windows Mobile trio for them it's possible that this Windows Mobile trio device right here is what the sooner sort of maybe eventually turned into maybe anyway it was phones like this and the Samsung Black Jack and the Moto Q that showed that Microsoft was may be getting closer to actually kind of knowing what it was doing in mobile and so Google saw these phones and it decided it needed a gun from Microsoft not Apple at the time so it bought Andy Reubens Android company and it got to work maybe you've read this famous story about how Andy Rubin reacted to the launch of the first iPhone according to an article in the Atlantic he was in a car watching the keynote and when he saw the iPhone he said holy crap I guess we're not gonna ship that phone except he didn't say it like strong bad because he's not strong bad anyway when he said we're not gonna ship that phone he meant the sooner because compared to the iPhone it looked instantly dated it looked like these windows mobile phones now according to Dianne Hackborn a Google engineer at the time she said that the decision to drop sooner was well before the iPhone announcement though we continued to use it for quite a while internally for development since it was the only semi stable hardware platform that we had which our version of the story is true the end result was this the HTC g1 which was codenamed dream it was the first commercially available phone that ran Android and it was unveiled a year and some change after the iPhone now compared to the sooner this is much more advanced it has a touchscreen for example and compared to Windows mobile phones it also feels pretty advanced it has a landscape keyboard that you can type on and this cool sidekick looking flip up thing and it's got a scroll ball and you can also you know put SD card in it this is a super gadgety gadget and using it looking at it you can really tell that they were more focused on getting business users and taking on Windows Mobile than they were just trying to take on the iPhone so I admit this is all circumstantial evidence and you probably want actual evidence and you know what makes really good evidence actual evidence Google's former CEO said that Android was about taking on Windows Mobile one of the bigger tech trials of the past decade was Google versus Oracle tech trials are great because you get testimony you get executives on the witness stand and they have to answer questions and Oracle really needed to talk about the early days of Android to prove its case so here's the transcript of the jury trial proceedings of Oracle V Google from April 24th 2012 Oracle's lawyers are questioning Eric Schmidt about the origins of Android and Eric Schmidt answers we were quite concerned about Microsoft's products it's hard to relate to that now but at the time we were very concerned that Microsoft's mobile strategy would be successful this was before the iPhone was announced and before the whole iPhone revolution occurred so honestly there you have it the whole structure of how Android works was designed to undercut Windows Mobile Samsung and LG and HTC basically most of the companies that were making phones back then we're making windows mobile phones and Google got them to make Android phones too and then make them basically exclusively that was the trick that's why you have an entire ecosystem of Android phone partners Google knew all these companies would want to make phones so it knew it had to make the operating system those phones would run Google wanted four phones what Microsoft had on the desktop scale they wanted Android on every phone because more Android customers meant more searches which means more money for Google because Google makes all its money off of people using search that's how they paid for Android giving Android away for free actually made Google more money because more people were using it and it undercut Microsoft which was making companies pay a license fee for Windows the bottom line is if you have wondered why Android works the way it does why even today there's still weird quirks like menus and back buttons in whatever don't look at the iPhone you should actually take a look back way back at the Moto Q because this is what they were trying to compete with hey everybody thanks for watching we're probably to do some more of these history videos so let me know what moments in Androids history you're interested in or let me know what your nostalgic for cuz god damn I love this little phone it's just it's so nerdy it's got a trackball it also doesn't have a headphone jack so take that every phone made right now I guess anyway