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by microtonal 15 days ago
Android was even an acquisition. However, it was open sourced after the iPhone. The iPhone was announced in January 2007 and released in June 2007. The first AOSP announcement/source drop was in November 2007.

I think it is very likely that Google open sourced Android to undercut iPhone. Android was initially developed for phones with a keyboard (similar to Blackberry). The introduction of the iPhone made it clear that touch was going to be the future, so Android was quite far behind before it was even released. Besides that, my recollection is that the first Android releases were pretty bad compared to iPhone OS. I know a lot of people (not necessarily Apple fans) who looked down on Android.

Open sourcing Android was a great move to rally manufacturers around Android and gather a large group of early enthusiasts.
2 comments
mike_hearn 15 days ago
No, open sourcing it had been the plan from the start. I was there, I was at the internal meetings where these plans were announced to employees.

The main impact iPhone had on Android was delaying it to redo the UI to make it nicer. Not trivial changes but not fundamental business strategy changes either.

First Android releases weren't bad at all. I'd say the UI was more 'classic' feeling and not as nicely animated than the first iPhone, but the first Android actually had far more features. And some critical ones too, like you could actually write apps for it.

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darkwater 15 days ago
> First Android releases weren't bad at all. I'd say the UI was more 'classic'

Maybe in your test labs, but on real HW it was sluggish, laggy and barely usable. Source: I owned the original Samsung Galaxy and tried some friend's HTC Magic and they were horrible. The first real good Android phone, perf wise, was IME the Galaxy S II.

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mike_hearn 15 days ago
I owned an HTC G1 and was happy enough with it. Smartphones are judged on far more than just UI latency.
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darkwater 15 days ago
That's why I owned Android phones ever since, but know with Google closing the system, it's losing what made it special.
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microtonal 14 days ago
No, open sourcing it had been the plan from the start. I was there, I was at the internal meetings where these plans were announced to employees.

Thank you for correcting me! Very interesting to hear.

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ignoramous 14 days ago
> Android was initially developed for phones with a keyboard (similar to Blackberry).

It was codenamed "Astro Boy". Btw, the team Andy Rubin assembled to build "android" first built OS for Digital Cameras viz. FotoFrame.

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