This is what the first Android phone could have looked like: co-founder shares render

Published On: November 2, 2022

Highlights

Rich Miner, the co-founder of Android, took to Twitter to share a render of what the first Android phone could have looked like.
The renders of what could have been the first-ever Android phone were designed five months before the original iPhone’s launch.
It had a black and neon theme, a jog wheel, and more buttons than the HTC Dream.

Android phones have been out in the market for over 14 years now. The first-ever Android phone launched back in 2008, a year after the first ever iPhone came out. It was the HTC Dream, aka T-mobile G1. However, renders of what could have been the first-ever Android phone were designed five months before the original iPhone’s launch. Rich Miner, the co-founder of Android, took to Twitter to share a render of what the first Android phone could have looked like.

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All along we were working on 2 phones, Sooner, more blackberry-like & Dream, touchscreen based. After the iPhone launch we did cancel Sooner to focus on Dream (eventually the Google G1) but its design changed little from this rendering made 5 months before the iPhone launched. pic.twitter.com/lC8m0WolgE
— Rich Miner (@richminer) October 31, 2022

The render shared by Miner shows that the black and neon phone looks akin to the original HTC Dream, but it has a sling keyboard and physical button. The leaked device had more punch than the HTC Dream’s understated final look, standing out with its neon green keyboard.

There’s a Google logo on the display’s upper left corner, which is also neon. It also had a jog wheel, which could have been used for navigation. Instead, the HTC Dream received a trackball.

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The phone’s design includes a lot more buttons overall the places. There’s an email and the “@” symbol keys, alongside answering, declining, going home, and going back keys, on the bottom of the handset. The HTC Dream, on the other hand, had only five buttons.

Miner says they were working on two phones at the time: “Sooner,” a Blackberry-like handset, and “Dream.” However, after the launch of the iPhone, the company sunset “Sooner” and double downs on developing “Dream.”