Did Android Really Look Like BlackBerry Before the iPhone?

Re:Did Android Really Look Like BlackBerry Before the iPhone? by mikepavone on Thursday October 27, 2011 @12:51AM (#3161687)

I bought a G1 back in February 2009 around when Android 1.1 was released and it didn't look "exactly like an iPhone". It didn't support multi-touch, it didn't have an on-screen keyboard and the launcher was quite different in operation from iOS. Applications weren't (and still aren't) added to the main launcher screen by default and instead get added to the application drawer. Apps have to be manually added to the home screens. Android of that era also made extensive use of a long-press gesture (I distinctly remember it as I found it quite un-intuitive at the time) which didn't show up in iOS until version 3.2 (except for in the homescreen anyway).

Physically, the devices were quite dissimilar too. The G1 had a smaller screen, was much thicker, had a slideout keyboard and a trackball in addition to five face buttons (Call, End Call, Home, Back and Menu).

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Re:Did Android Really Look Like BlackBerry Before the iPhone? by TomOfTTB on Thursday October 27, 2011 @01:00AM (#3161708)

Multi-Touch was disabled in the G1 on purpose but was there (it appeared in the European version:http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f8/some-good-videos-on-en...). It didn't have an onscreen keyboard because it had a physical keyboard but Android that an onscreen keyboard (as evidenced in the sdk video). Applications are added to the Apps screen instead of the launcher but Google just added a step.

As for the rest no one was saying the G1 was identical to the iPhone just that the OS looked identical.

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Re:Did Android Really Look Like BlackBerry Before the iPhone? by mikepavone on Thursday October 27, 2011 @01:30AM (#3161787)

The G1 hardware supported it (though not very well), but Android had no support until 2.1 which was never officially available for the G1. It wasn't just turned off. Even if you enabled multi-touch in the kernel with a custom ROM, the rest of the Android stack had no ability to use it. The story was the same in Europe and the US and I don't see anything in that link that provides evidence to the contrary.

Android had no support for an on-screen keyboard until 1.5. The emulator included with the original SDK has a virtual keyboard, but that's part of the emulator skin, not a feature of the OS and is not displayed on the virtual screen. The addition of a software keyboard while not strictly necessary on the G1, was rather useful as it allowed you to enter text while using the phone in a portrait orientation.

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