That’s right, five years ago today, the T-Mobile G1 was born. It was the first Android phone to be released, which is why we celebrate it’s birthday or anniversary every year. The device was announced five years ago today, but not released until five years ago in October.
We had been working for months and months with a small team in Building 44 in Mountain View, CA. We had seen about 9 different versions of the new “Homescreen” for Android and I still wasn’t completely certain we had seen the last one. I remember Fridays being “Donut Day” at the cafe there, and the arcade where I would spend my lunch with a bunch of Android coders playing old school video games – the team was bursting with excitement over what they were building and bringing to the world.
For those of you interested, the specs of the T-Mobile G1 were:
- 3.2-inch 320×480 resolution TFT Display
- 192MB of RAM
- 256MB internal storage with microSD card slot
- 3.15MP camera on the back, no front-facing camera
- Qualcomm MSM7201A processor clocked at 528MHz
- Android 1.6 – Donut
- 1150mAh battery
Now think about the specs we see in smartphones today, man has time passed. Now we’re seeing 13MP cameras, and quad-core 2.3GHz processors, 3000mAh batteries, and even 6.3-inch displays. It’s hard to think of using this phone and it being smaller than the iPhone was.
If it weren’t for Google, Android, HTC and T-Mobile for getting the G1 out there and continuing with this project, many of us wouldn’t have the jobs we do today. Many of us might be using a Blackberry or an iPhone. Heck, Blackberry might not have just gotten bought out. But we’re glad Android happened, and I’m excited to see how it changes in the next 5 years. Imagine what kind of specs we’ll see in 2018.
For you’re enjoyment, we’ve included a video of the T-Mobile G1 launch event from 2008.