2023 Author: Gordon Kinson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:09
A moment of nostalgia, ladies and gentlemen! An employee of the YouTube channel EverythingApplePro got hold of the first two smartphones - the first iPhone 2G (2007) and the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1, released in 2008), from which the history of Android began. In this case, both gadgets work on firmware out of the box. Who is cooler? Let's take a look!
The first thing that is no longer striking, but what would definitely surprise a person in 2008, is the display size of both smartphones. By the standards of the time, it was considered huge! The iPhone 2G had it even larger - 3.5 inches versus 3.2 inches from the competitor. The resolution was the same (320 × 480 pixels), due to the smaller display diagonal, the picture was a little sharper on the Dream.
It is much more convenient to hold an iPhone in your hand - the HTC smartphone is made somehow very clumsy, it is inconvenient to twist it in the palm of your hand, it is very "plastic" and gives the impression of a cheap thing. In addition, Apple's smart phone is almost 2 times thinner.
An important difference between iPhone and HTC Dream is the way information is entered. Apple's smartphone has only one (touch screen plus Home button), while the Taiwanese Googlephone tries to combine both the new and the old world (physical call buttons, qwerty-keyboard, joystick). Obviously, Apple's competitors didn't get it right away: push-button phones are a thing of the past. Today it is clear that the Cupertino company won this battle.
In things like replacing the battery and adding built-in memory, the iPhone introduced the “don't touch anything here” approach, which surprised then-users in 2007. Dream had everything the old fashioned way - if desired, the owner could easily not only replace the battery, but also add an SD memory card up to 8 GB.
How does archaic software work by today's standards? Today it is customary to scold Apple for lagging behind in terms of software development. But when comparing the iPhone 2G and HTC Dream software, you will immediately notice one argument in favor of the then "apple" developers - in iOS 1.0 (then it was called the iPhone OS) from the very beginning there was a convenient on-screen keyboard, whereas in the very first Android it … yes -well no! This function appeared later, and Dream owners could type text in the usual way - from a physical qwerty keyboard on a slider.
Interestingly, the Android smartphone presented in the review was supposed to be completely different. Initially, the device looked more like the qwerty smartphones of BlackBerry and Nokia. But after the iPhone was released in 2007, it quickly became clear that the traditional keyboard had no chance, and the project was quickly abandoned.
Continuing the theme of software, we note an interesting feature: the first Android did not allow setting wallpaper on the lock screen. The iPhone had no problems with this … but putting a picture on the desktop in iOS 1.0 was impossible, whereas Android 1 provided such an opportunity.
There was only one way to unlock your iPhone - the legendary Slide to Unlock! From the very beginning, Android had a graphic password, but the whole world remembered not it, but the branded "apple" swipe to the right.
The menu for entering the verification code immediately suggests how imperfect the protection of mobile devices was at first. As it turned out in due time, any user could easily bypass the code-password protection by simply making a call to the emergency service (the video shows in detail how to do this).
The first version of iOS was very modest in terms of functionality. You couldn't even swap icons! There were no screen pages with applications either - and there was nothing to flip through, because all the software for the first iPhone fit on one screen! And the Home button could only do one thing - take you out of the application to the main Home screen. Yes, yes, and nothing else! Multitasking, Siri - all of this came much later.
But in the Android-smartphone HTC, multitasking was already there - it could be called up by long pressing the Home button. Already in 2008, it was possible to pull out the "curtain" with favorite applications placed in it from the bottom of the display. There was also a notification center in the very first Android - something that iPhone fans got only in iOS 5, and a control center (and this function did not appear until iOS 7). Icons could be swapped, deleted, even then there were widgets, which have no full-fledged analogues in iOS to this day … Why, Android 1.0 even had its own Market application store, which was very advanced at that time! In other words, in terms of software, Android surpasses iOS even when the competition between the two ecosystems was just beginning.
Interestingly, in terms of hardware, the HTC smartphone offered a more powerful filling, but in the GeekBench benchmark, it was not he who gave the best results, but the iPhone 2G - 143 points against 82. Even then, Apple paid increased attention to optimization, and the engineers of competing companies traditionally neglected this …
As for the battery life, here the iPhone beats the competitor both in battery power (1,400 mAh versus 1,150 in the Dream) and in endurance in real-world conditions.
Finally, one cannot but say a few words about the cameras. The original iPhone has 2 megapixel, the HTC Dream has a slightly better module - 3.2 megapixels. But the Android smartphone didn’t have vertical photography - only landscape mode was available. Today it is difficult to talk about the quality of pictures without a smile - at the time of the release of these smartphones, cameras were clearly the last thing that worried engineers. In general, there is a draw in this parameter - some photos turned out better with the iPhone, others with the Dream.
See also:
- From PowerBook to MacBook Pro: The Evolution of Apple Laptops.
- 30 years of sympathy and enmity between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in facts and photos.
- How the iPhone 2G camera shoots versus the iPhone 7 Plus.
