Sure, the very first iPhone released today, but does anyone remember the first Android smartphone?

In October of 2008 HTC’s T-Mobile G1, or HTC Dream as it’s known outside the U.S would launch being the first phone with the Android OS. The G1 was priced at $179 — which was pretty affordable even in those days — and featured top-of-the-line specs including a Qualcomm MSM7201A processor, 192MB of RAM, and 256MB of internal storage (expandable up to 16GB). It also stocked a 3.15MP rear camera, and a 1,150mAh battery.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Same. I’ll never stop blaming Steve Jobs’ hate of physical keys and practicality in favor of looks. Fuck him, but above all, fuck all the competitors that jumped on the “EVERYTHING ON THE SCREEN” bandwagon.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        And that’s fine. I just miss there being choices. I get that the hinges increased costs, but dammit, why can’t we just have some expensive phones with hinges and let people choose?

      • snowbell@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I recall seeing physical keyboards on at least one phone that still let you swipe text.

    • donio@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      We had actual form-factor innovation back then, for a while phone designs still dared to try something besides the slab. Some real work went into that G1 slider mechanism.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I think about that! Our mobile technologies have been becoming less and less accessible as they’ve all settled into the same form factor of big screens with few to no buttons

          • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            User studies with people not familiar with existing computer metaphors are always so interesting. It always leads to novel computing experiences completely divergent from the classical desktop metaphor. In many ways, we’ve outgrown the desktop metaphor and could start coming up with better and more captivating machine interactions if we just divorced ourselves from the concept. I don’t really have any good suggestions for what to do about it, but I often think about the hamburger menu icon. That shit doesn’t make sense. You see it everywhere because everyone’s settled on it, but if you were told “make a website that people who aren’t familiar with websites can use and enjoy” you would never use that stupid icon