Smartphone industry has seen astronomical advancements and innovations over the past twelve (12) years. they need become so powerful such , they will successfully take the place of laptops and desktop computers in terms of functionality. watching the specifications and features these devices pack in recent times, one need to wonder how of these came to being. this is often why I’ve decided to require a glance back at where of these started so on fully appreciate how we are immediately with our smartphones.

Before The Invention Of Smartphones:

Prior to 2007, the 2 popular mobile Operating Systems (OS) we had were Symbian and Windows Mobile. For mobile telephony brand, Nokia has been the leading name in those era and their advanced phones were running on Symbian OS. it had been this Symbian OS that pioneered the favored messaging platform WhatsApp. before this Symbian OS, Java OS was in use hence Symbian had to kind of incorporate this Java system into the Symbian to enable the phones to support the apps that aren’t a part of the Symbian platform at the time.

Nokia JAVA phones

 

Nokia Symbian Phone

Windows Mobile on the opposite hand, may be a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and Pocket PCs. This was discontinued to offer way for a rebranding to Windows Phone in 2010 thanks to competition issues. Windows Mobile was initially adopted by mobile brand HTC and Nokia for a few of their phones. Samsung also at some point adopted this OS for a few of it’s phones back within the days.

Windows Mobile (Pocket PC)

 

Windows Phones

This OS is that the mobile version of the Windows personal computer at the time and it basically had most of the features found on Windows for PC also because the keys on the keyboard.

The Birth Of Smartphones:

Around 2005, Apple was still the leading brand in computing but decided to venture into mobile production. At an equivalent time, Google had purchased Android from Andi Rubin, the “Father of Android”. Originally, Android was designed as a smart-camera OS for digital cameras.

However, the Android as a smart-camera system did not attract investors hence had to be abandoned which made it easier to be sold out at the time. Google then converted it into a mobile OS to rival the then Symbian and Windows Mobile OS. They however kept their works top secret so on surprise the market when the time comes.

At the time, the management and developers of Google were considerably aware that Apple was also performing on a phone hence they didn’t publish anything about their phone project on their website. Finally (in 2007), Google developers finished the event of the OS also because the production of a working prototype of the phone. This phone was manufactured by HTC and was named HTC Sooner. However, this mobile was never launched because Apple beat them to their game by unveiling their first iPhone with iOS 1.0 on January 9th 2007.

The HTC Sooner (was never released for use)

In fact, when Steve Jobs was launching this device, one among Google’s developer was passing by and out of curiosity, had to attend the ceremony. it had been then and there he realized that they had to travel back to the fundamentals as their product looked more like it’s from the nineties in comparison to the iPhone 2G. The iPhone was so good that, even Google’s developers wanted to shop for it. Thus, Google had to discontinue the whole HTC Sooner device production and went back aggressively to redesigning the Android OS and therefore the phone itself.

As a matter of fact, their engineers worked 60 to 80 hours every week for this revolutionary project. This significant time dedication by the engineers cost them their health and spouses and youngsters . Their life was never an equivalent after this project. However, despite dedicating such a considerable time and resources to the present project, the new phone ( truth first Android smartphone with Android 1.0 OS) came to existence in September 2008, almost two (2) whole years!

By then, Apple had already unrolled it’s iOS 2.0 on their second smartphone— iPhone 3G. However, the delay in getting the Android 1.0 and therefore the smartphone ready was well worth the wait because the OS clothed to be better than Apple’s iOS 1.0. the very fact that a number of the features packed in Android 1.0 back in 2008 took substantial years before they were implemented in iOS gives credence to the quantity of labor Google has done. As a matter of fact, for an entire decade, a number of these features never made it onto iOS.

About iPhone 2G and iOS 1.0

1. The Apps layout was an equivalent because the recent layout even after 13 years. Same grid-type, format and icons.

2. There was no Appstore ( it had been implemented in iOS 2.0).

3. There was no Copy and Paste feature for text-editing ( came with iOS 3.0).

4. There was no Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

5. There was no audio or video app or service.

6. The App icons can’t be rearranged ( because there’s no touch-and-hold feature).

7. The homescreen and lockscreen wallpapers can’t be changed.

8. Camera can only capture still pictures ( video only come on the 3rd Generation iPhone ( iPhone 3GS—iOS 3.0).

9. Battery life was impressive (1,400mAh).

10. It came with a docking system out of the box (to mimic the ipod when playing music).

Regardless of of these missing features, the iPhone was focused on speed, fully-fledged browser (Safari) and security. it’s also worth noting that, the iPhone 2G was the primary to introduce multi-touch functionality that caused the touch-and-pan feature that permits zooming in or out on pictures(this isn’t to mention that Apple is that the inventor of multi-touch, the technology has been there….. they’ve just kind of partnered with the engineer to implement it into the device). Apple is additionally the primary to use glass on a touch-screen during a smartphone also as adopt a 16-million-colour LCD screen.

About HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) and Android 1.0:

The production was sponsored by T-Mobile hence it’s second name T-Mobile G1 and came with the subsequent Present and Missing features:

1. It came with a random two-way interaction methods —touch screen (plastic type) and hardware keys(scrolling trackball for navigation and even with full QWERTY keyboard for typing).

2. It had a hardware Menu, Back and residential buttons.

3. It are often shifted or slid to the side (landscape mode) to permit for typing using the keyboard.

4. The screen was made with only 65,000 colours as compared with Apple’s 16,000,000 colours. this suggests colour reproduction was very bad on this phone as compared to the iPhone. Till now, 16 million coloured screen has been the quality .

5. There was no screen transition effects as found on the iPhone 2G.

6. There was also no dedicated headphone jack (requires a proprietary headphone adapter).

7. The battery life on this device was very horrible (1,150mAh).

Regardless of of these shortcomings, the android was focused on user-friendliness, innovative features and customizable interface unlike the iPhone.

As a matter of fact, tons of Android’s basic features like Copy and Paste, Notification Panel, 3rd Party Push Notifications, Over-The-Air (OTA) upgrade and Multi-tasking features that came with Android 1.0 took years to be implemented into the iOS.

Copy and Paste, OTA upgrade, 3rd Party Push Notification and Multi-tasking only made their way onto the iOS three years later ( iOS 3.0). That of the Notification Panel came on iOS 5.0 (5 years later).

Till date, some key Android features like the power to line default apps (such as browsers, email, etc), 3rd Party home screen widgets and Alphabetical App tray are missing in iOS (although the default app feature has now been somewhat introduced within the latest iOS 14). Well, some may argue that these two competing OS doesn’t necessarily need to have same features but truth be told, some things became basic hence the necessity to be implemented on any OS that really wants to be relevant to users.