Road to G1 has been a three-year endeavor for Google, HTC
How many Google and HTC engineers does it take to build an Android phone? We don't have the punchline to that one, exactly -- but at least we have a pretty good idea of how long it takes. HTC's Chief Marketing Officer has revealed that it kicked off negotiations with Google some five years ago -- before it had even acquired Android, interestingly -- and has been deeply embedded in the Android team for the past three years. That's a long frickin' time, but we figure the first model's probably ten times harder to throw together than its successors are, so hopefully we'll see a nice cadence of "HTC Innovation" from here on out. We know it's been said many times before, but it probably bears repeating: Touch Pro and Touch HD with Android, guys. Please.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kiwi616 @ Sep 25th 2008 2:46PM
3 years!?! to get that model....hopefully it gets a little nicer on the eyes with it's successor
Don @ Sep 25th 2008 3:38PM
Yeah. The idea of Android is great, but I've got a bad taste in my mouth from HTC. The Wing really changed my opinion of HTC. It's not that I had just one and based my decision on that.. I'm on my 3rd... in a year. Touchscreen stops working, buttons stop working. I'll never buy an HTC device again, at least not until they really wow me.
TareX @ Sep 25th 2008 3:45PM
3 years ago HTC wasn't as flashy as it was now. That explains a lot about the looks of this phone.
It also supports the ex-Google Mobile product manager's words:
"It’s funny - but the first time I heard about Android was about 2.5 years ago, when Eric Schmidt told me about the device at Stanford after I got a job offer from Google (yet before I accepted it!). Since then I have seen many iterations of the software. The software. Not the device itself, because sadly it hasn’t changed in many years. The reason many people see the phone as ugly and old-fashioned is simply… because it IS! It’s a design unchanged for at least two years, without iterations on it besides color schemas (it’s now available in Zune-brown along with white and black) and the silly ‘with Google’ description on the back. Don’t ask me what ‘with Google’ means. I didn’t understand it back then and still don’t understand it today."
His Facebook status reads, “Ulf is disappointed but not surprised about the ‘G1′. Where’s the cheap data plan? Where do I plug in my headphones? No video player? How do I get contacts in it?”
http://blog.ulfw.com/2008/09/android-why-art-thou/
sr @ Sep 25th 2008 3:46PM
That headline just made me chuckle. Honestly.
yaniv.chokron @ Sep 25th 2008 4:31PM
Dont blame HTC on WinMos poor efforts. Had M$ been a bit more dedicated to rpoducing a palatable product, they would have insisted from the OEMs a MINIMUM processor speed. WTF?!?! WinMo on 200 Mhz processor or GHAST even less?
What do you expect but molasses type responsiveness.
John @ Sep 25th 2008 2:48PM
well, they wrote an operating system... that's not exactly the sort of thing you just sit down and start writing, you know...
jakem @ Sep 25th 2008 2:57PM
Except that most of it was already written for them considering that it's Linux.
Serge @ Sep 25th 2008 3:05PM
yea, you gotta stand up and start writing. no sitting allowed!
narutogrey @ Sep 25th 2008 3:26PM
The operating system was pretty much written before google purchased Android. And if it takes a company 3 years to write a Linux based OS, the company must have 11 months of vacation every year. Seriously, any college level programmer can put together a decent/stable OS in less than a year's time.
SuperQ @ Sep 25th 2008 4:01PM
@jakem and others
You seriously have no idea what you're talking about. If you look at the documentation and the SDK you wouldn't say such moronic stuff.
Android is not "just Linux". Linux is simply used as a hardware access layer. Android itself is an entire new OS with it's own API stack, compiler and VM. The java code used isn't even Sun Java, it's Dalvik Java.
Danny @ Sep 25th 2008 2:54PM
Then the story of the "gphone" was pretty much true.
Well how about that.
dan larson @ Sep 25th 2008 2:57PM
3 years makes a lot of sence. The sidekick was a very popular phone then.
TareX @ Sep 25th 2008 3:55PM
Not a mac fanatic or anything, but this is a pre-iPhone age design. 3 years makes sense to me.
Remember when the Tytn II was out? Everyone here (incuding me) was all like.... "WANT!"...." WANT!".... "WANT!". Everyone's reaction to the fugliness of the G1, including Android enthusiasts like myself, is only a testimony to how iPhone was a game changer... not only in mobile UI, but in hardware aesthetics as well.
codyp @ Sep 25th 2008 3:04PM
They should of took the time and money from making it revolve so much around big brother google, to make the phone sleeker, and run more smoothly.
Martin @ Sep 25th 2008 3:09PM
I dont know about making the phone sleeker, but the OS running more smoothly will definitely come with time. This is still only version 1.0 of Android. Improvements are bound to follow, be it thru the Android developers or possibly submissions/edits by the open source community. I would expect that many launch problems and performance issues that crop up will be solved rather quickly.
Shakapooi @ Sep 25th 2008 3:55PM
What the heck is "they should of took the money"......... It is "they should have taken the money" !!!!!!!
Oh yes...i went there...
Jon Doe. @ Sep 25th 2008 7:35PM
codyp,
Gah.....I'm sick of this idea that Google is big brother. Name me one instance where Google has intentionally used user's personal data in unethical ways. Just one.
There isn't one. Because Google isn't trying to screw people or other companies over, unlike Apple, Microsoft, etc who have documented behavior of crappy policies. they are a big company. Oh boo hoo. That doesn't automatically make them evil. Their behavior defines them.
--------- @ Sep 25th 2008 3:29PM
The Touch Pro and Touch HD are full featured WinMo devices for mobile power users that don’t want or need to have their hands held. Why would HTC want to dumb these new phones down with a consumer oriented advertizing supported OS?
TareX @ Sep 25th 2008 3:50PM
Stop with the juvenile hype, Engagdet.
Unless the Touch Pro and HD have a compass, they won't function well with Android's top selling app features: Street View ("compass mode") and Enkin ("Live Mode", work in progress).
They were made for WM and that's how they should stay. Let's hope SE come to their senses and adopt Android for their Xperia line till WM7 is outed.
S4Rs @ Sep 25th 2008 4:07PM
Didn't people say that about firefox?
TareX @ Sep 25th 2008 4:20PM
Unless firefox required a piece of HARDWARE that wasn't available on a suggested machine, your comeback makes no sense.
drew @ Sep 25th 2008 3:33PM
I dont think its the OS thats the problem, its the JAVA sitting on top,
chefgon_ign @ Sep 25th 2008 4:06PM
Here's my interpretation:
The G1 was designed three years ago as a testing platform to be used for Android development. It includes a touch screen, a navigation ball, and a sliding Qwerty keyboard. These features together make a good platform to test against, it allows them to make sure everything is usable without the touch screen and that they are prepared for the possibility of re-orienting the screen. The internal specs also include a whole slew of stuff like GPS, Compass, and Bluetooth to make sure that they can be integrated properly into the OS when present.
The G1 was never intended to be a major commercial release, hence the lack of headphone port in favor of HTC's standard mutipurpose jack. As Android's 2009 rollout started to draw closer, HTC among other manufacturers are probably hard at work designing handsets specifically for public consumption.
T-Mobile, in their attempt to grab headlines and win customers, decides to launch early. The only way to make that happen is to launch using the existing "test hardware" that is already bug tested and guarenteed to work with the OS with very little time spent in QA. This also explains why Android is missing a lot of key features.. they weren't ready to launch just yet. So we have T-Mobile jumping the gun and releasing a near-finished OS on a handset that was not designed with end-users in mind.
MasterCKO @ Sep 25th 2008 4:35PM
interesting theory. Makes my decision to wait for Sprint's Android device next year sound much better. 8^D
Tom @ Sep 26th 2008 4:01AM
Sounds very plausible to me, it would also align with googles habbit of finetuning their applications "on the go".
On a side note. I find the comments on the fact that applications on android do not follow a specific look rather strange, the internet itself does not adhere to a common visual design and that had never bothered anyone - it just comes with the fact that everyone can put up everything they want. I think that people only judge sites/applications by their usability not by the fact that they do not look like x or y's home page/application.
Also, adhering to a specific visual design often implies a choice and therefore a limitation on what is possible in a certain ecosystem.
iEye @ Sep 25th 2008 4:16PM
Wow... 3 long years of FAIL!
CowboysFan @ Sep 25th 2008 4:56PM
Man what an ugly phone, I don't care how good the Android is but man it's so ugly,
Iphone 3G, Nokia N96, Samsung i900, LG Dare all look 100 time better than this G1.
Shaharyar @ Sep 25th 2008 6:17PM
Imagine android on the Touch HD, add in a accelerometer and a compass, and more polished version of Android. That might as well be the "iPhone killer"
Looks, nice os (after a little maturity), and open source.. what more could you want?
WillHe @ Sep 25th 2008 6:19PM
Gah! I'm annoyed at how most of the comments are "It's ugly." It's a cell phone. It stays in your pocket for most of the day. You are not wearing it. Functionality should be at the top of the WANT list here, but many people are just commenting on the looks. Yeah, it's a matte finish instead of glossy. It is more brick-like, without the insanely rounded edges. So what?
Comments on the requirement of a Gmail account, no corporate email, etc., seem entirely more relevant to a cell phone.
LordJohnWhorfin @ Sep 25th 2008 7:57PM
Twice the amout of time it took Apple to design the hardware and software of the iPhone, and all they could build is this atrocity? EPIC FAIL doesn't even begin to describe it.
SJlovesJesus @ Sep 26th 2008 12:57AM
There is a flaw with your argument. The iCrap may have taken less time to build and release, but it's dated crap technology, the hardware is poor and the software is just a bubbly interface on top of a poor, unresponsive system that freezes all the time. I think taking time to make something that's good quality (and looks aside the G1 and android both look pretty good quality) is much better than rushing out a hillbillie piece of junk, ala Apple
Tone @ Sep 26th 2008 12:25AM
rotfl the road to failure.
mac @ Sep 26th 2008 8:21AM
Wow. 3 years? Guess no one can call it an iPhone ripoff anymore. Maybe iPhone took cues from this design. I am so sick of hear about the iPhone on these damn blogs and I suspect soon I will be sick of hearing every minuscule detail about Android.
Andrew @ Sep 26th 2008 2:42PM
I would love to see those two other phones with Android, but with the typical HTC interface on top. That would be smooth and well worth any waiting that would be needed.
M@rtin @ Oct 2nd 2008 11:13PM
i just hope later on, android gets or supports a program like wm works (word, excel powerpoint..etc) as i do most of my school work on windows word.. also i think that microsoft delayed wm7 becasue it would of probably look like crap compare to android... my opinion :-P