Sorry, but no. [LWN.net]

Sorry, but no.

Posted Oct 7, 2009 18:33 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Toward a freer Android by brouhaha
Parent article: Toward a freer Android

Google doesn't manufacture the hardware, but Google did most of the hardware engineering that went into the G1 and ADP1.

Not really

They provided this as a reference platform to HTC. So Google was much more "in control" of the hardware than you might think.

Not even close. HTC designed and provided the hardware. Sure, Google supplied requirements, but details were left to HTC - result is usual HTC crazyness (instal of 2.5mm jack and mini-USB or even normal 3.5mm jackand min-USB there are this strange combination favored by HTC).

(Log in to post comments)

Sorry, but no.

Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:25 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Sure, HTC changed the audio jack, but the reference hardware platform was designed by Android before Google bought them, much less before HTC got their hands on it.

You are correct,of course. Google guys have developed initial version of the device. This is how it looked like. Find ten differences between Google's creation and G1...

Even the mechanical design was done by Android, as one can see by the patent on the slide mechanism. Certainly HTC made some minor changes, but it was not fundamentally hardware designed by HTC.

Hard to believe if you compare Google's creation and HTC's one. The only common thing they have is hardware keyboard! It was probably hard requirement at that stage so HTC was forced to design a slider. But other stuff... there huge number of differences between engineering prototype and G1...

Sorry, but no.

Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:42 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]

That photo is one of the much later designs. The early ones were very similar to the G1. I can't find any photos of it, which isn't too surprising since Android was still in "stealth mode" at the time.

This is not photo.

Posted Oct 8, 2009 16:22 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I can't find any photos of it, which isn't too surprising since Android was still in "stealth mode" at the time.

You can't find any photos if it because they don't exist. What I showed above is not even photo - it's default skin from the very first public release of Android SDK! Why it looks like that? Well - it's the render of actual developer device. Hundred of these or so were produced at the end 2006 (not 2007, but 2006!), but even if HTC produced them (and they even beed spotted in the wild eventually) HTC hated them. And so HTC developed Dream (aka G1) - with Google's guys help, of course, but it's not Google creation.

Later Android SDK stopped using this skin and switched to G1-like skin. Why? Google finally got sizable number of new HTC-developed devices and dropped support for it's own development platform and form-factor. First prototypes were ready by the middle of 2007, but developers got sizable number of them closer to the end of 2007. Public, of course, got them in 2008. That's the story and please don't try to rewrite it. If you are correct and initial creation was like Dream and later ones were like aforementioned developer platform,then how come we never got anything like the development platform? Why it was used by default in the very first release of the SDK and not in the later ones? Why all photos of the "later design" (by your interpretation) are shown with early versions of Android (ribbon-like interface was in the first release of SDK and in the first presentation video) and never with modern UI design? Facts just don't add up to your crazy story, sorry.