

Did Android Really Look Like BlackBerry Before the iPhone? - dimitar
http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

======
runjake
I don't get this article's logic. The original iPhone was unveiled in January
2007, 11 months before the timeframe of November 2007.

The grid of icons thing had been in mobile phones for years and years before
Android or the iPhone. What Android borrowed was the capacitive multitouch-
style interface of the iPhone.

I played extensively with the Android SDK public releases before it
incorporated touch. So did perhaps hundreds or thousands of others. It clearly
wasn't going the direction the iPhone was, at the time.

He talks about facts this and facts that. But the fact is, he's wrong. Android
borrowed from the iPhone's new paradigms. Has it been that long ago that we've
already forgotten history?

Note that none of his facts come from personal experience. They come from dug
up videos.

And again, what's the big deal? Everyone's all of a sudden screaming theft.
Iterative improvements are good. They promote evolution and competition (eg.
one upping each other's designs).

~~~
TomOfTTB
I agree with everything you said but the one thing you didn't mention is he
makes the mistake of dating the prototype to the Techcrunch post. When in fact
the prototype was obviously from an earlier version (hence the SDK looking
like an iPhone).

As he said in the article Android had been in development for years before
Google bought the company.

What is noteworthy about the "Blackberry" phone is the entire paradigm is
different. The navigation is different. The desktop-esque icons on the home
screen are different (the blackberry prototype had a dock type system where as
Android has the icons on the desktop). The resolution is different (notice
Android phones with keyboards have smaller screens but a similar resolution
ratio where as the blackberry protype had a wide, short screen)

Notice how the touchscreen in the video works like the keyboard prototype and
nothing like modern day android. Look at the 3 minute mark. See he's
navigating through a dock. See how the commands are through menus and not
icons like modern day android. Notice no pinch and zoom (he uses a button on
the side). Notice no swipe (he's using a button on the right hand side). It's
as if they took a keyboard prototype and rushed out a touch version (and then
added all Apple's look, feel and gestures later)

Compare the phone shown in the video to the G1
([http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/681/tmobile-g-...](http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/681/tmobile-g-1.jpg))
which had gestures, 4 icons per screen, swipe to get between screens and so
on.

~~~
mikepavone
While the launcher changed quite a between the initial SDK release when that
video was taken and what shipped on the G1, the version of Android shown did
support a drag-scroll gesture for scrolling through the dock and app drawer.
It did not support kinetic scrolling at the time though. You can still
download the version of the SDK that was released back in November 2007 (when
the video in question was released) and play with that early version in the
emulator.

The G1 has never supported pinch-to-zoom or multi-touch in general except for
in 3rd party ROMs and at least as of Gingerbread menus are still quite
prevalent in Android (though D-pads and trackballs have fallen out of favor).
The G1 also lacked an on-screen keyboard at its initial release (though this
was added in an official update, Android 1.5 IIRC).

I don't think anyone would argue that Android hasn't been influenced by iOS,
but it doesn't seem clear that they were solely focused on a non-touchscreen
Blackberry clone and then did a complete 180 upon the release of the iPhone.
It's certainly possible that they did so before they publicly announced
Android, but we don't have any direct evidence of that.

------
arn
But November 2007 is still 11 months after the original iPhone was introduced.

~~~
ambirex
I also found strange was the "Like the iPhone itself was standing on the
shoulders of giants (iPhone to PalmOS: hi daddy!)"

But wasn't PalmOS at least inspired by the Newton?

~~~
Tichy
At some point, you have a mobile device that you somehow have to interact
with. Sorry, but I don't think Apple deserves credit for
clickable/pointable/touchable icons (didn't that stuff come out of Xerox
parc?).

~~~
myspy
(I think some of the current mobile stuff comes from the ubiquitous computing
research that PARC did.)

They (Apple) deserve the credit for bringing those concepts to a lot of
people.

And obviously it is true that interacting with objects/icons on a touchscreen
is a general solution.

But the problem is not Android doing that, the problem is they lend all the
aspects iOS makes original to include it in their concept. And Samsung copies
the hardware look and feel.

That's the easy way to go for them. I think they could have come up with
something different. Making the concept even better. But at the current
situation, they will always be behind iOS, because Apple knows way better how
to do great, usable interfaces. I guess iOS 6 will bring more widgets to the
notification center and maybe animated/live icons or something like that.

These are the parts Google did new on Apples conceptual idea, and they will
eventually come to iOS too, but more refined in a more cohesive way. Google
needs to think differently.

------
jinushaun
I remember vividly back in 2007 all the Blackberry-clone screenshots of
Android with multiple buttons and scroll wheel. Not just the one referenced in
the article, but _many_ screenshots and no screenshots of a full touch
interface. And then around the time the SDK was released in November, there
started appearing the full touchscreen interface we see today.

~~~
cube13
Google was demoing the Blackberry-style configuration as late as February
2008, too. For a second, I thought I was going crazy, then I found this
picture: <http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html>

------
salem
Well, if you go back to 2003, there was the Motorola A760, which looked a lot
like current android phone but without capacitive touch (resistive
touch/stylus, no keyboard though). Oh, and it ran linux, and apps via java.

<http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_a760-392.php>

~~~
wmf
Yeah, I had a P800 running UIQ back in the day. But I think the bottom line is
that if you put a UIQ phone, a WinCE phone, an iPhone, and a G1 in a lineup,
the G1 would be a lot closer to the iPhone than the others. And the similarity
has only increased over time.

~~~
Causification
Know what would be a heck of a lot closer? A Clie TH55.

<http://reviews.cnet.com/sc/30733801-2-440-front-2.gif>

~~~
sbuk
Which is not dissimilar to a Palm Treo, and Palms OS was very similar to
Newton.

------
aaronyo
The article doesn't even speak to the obvious rebuttals: 1) the "touch screen"
Android interface is mostly driven by buttons, 2) the iPhone was launched 11
months earlier, 3) the blackberry looking phone is the one the guy was
carrying around for 6 mo.

Right or wrong, an argument that does not address obvious rebuttals is not an
argument, it's wishful thinking in an echo chamber.

~~~
Terretta
"the "touch screen" Android interface is mostly driven by buttons"

That's what I kept thinking while watching the video. Blackberry and
Blackberry Pearl were all about pushing or selecting things using a rocker or
ball, and that's what's shown in this video for making selections.

What the iPhone changed was direct interaction, making the OS interact and
respond the way the spinning globe does in this video.

------
sahaj
Anyone notice that Sergey uses the word "Apps" in the video. I find it
incredible when people claim that Apple introduced the word App, and therefore
the trademark "App Store" is valid. So glad that was squared away during the
Amazon suit.

~~~
myspy
The term applications or apps is used on OS X too. And for a very long time.

~~~
sbuk
I recall referring to 'apps' when discussing MacPaint and Hypercard in the
late 80s. Apple have used the 'apps' term for many years.

~~~
thomholwerda
It's actually a much older term than that.

[http://www.osnews.com/story/24882/The_History_of_App_and_the...](http://www.osnews.com/story/24882/The_History_of_App_and_the_Demise_of_the_Programmer)

[disclaimer: I'm the author of both the parent article as well as the article
linked to in this comment]

~~~
sbuk
I'm sure it is, I wasn't suggesting otherwise; just concurring with the poster
I replied to that Apple have used the term for a long time and that they
certainly used the term long before OS X was released.

Programmer, by the way, referred to their wares as 'software' and 'programs'
(hence the nomenclature), not just apps. Your observation that "marketing and
legal" call the shots is trite. And wrong. The issue, as with everything, is
accountants and money men.

------
ZeroGravitas
The point I'd make is that you _still_ get BlackBerry style android phones,
and crazy folding ones and many other form factors.

If you only compare a single blackberry-style phone from the pre-iPhone era
and one slab phone (which doesn't look particularly iPhoney-except in relation
to the hardware keyboard phone) then you'll make a good rhetorical point for
people who already believe that Android is an iPhone clone. I don't know if
you'll convince anyone else.

There was a similar, older comparison which resized the phones and kept
hardware keyboards shut, which again, seems a bit disingenuous if the point is
to show similarity.

------
salem
Also, what about Microsoft surface, which had some multitouch concepts, and
had been talked up for years before the iPhone.

------
jessedhillon
TL;DR fanboy bullshit.

~~~
sbuk
From which point of view?

~~~
jessedhillon
It looks like Android, but that's not my point. My point is that only fanboys
care about a discussion of whether or not Android looks like X, or if Apple
copied Y, etc.

I think productive people who actually create things that people use have
better things to do than fight these wars so I flagged it -- HN is supposed to
be for such people, and so why do we have fanboy ammo on the front page?

