Sure, the very first iPhone released today, but does anyone remember the first Android smartphone?
In October of 1998 HTC’s T-Mobile G1, or HTC Dream as it’s known outside the U.S would launch being the first phone with the Android OS. The G1 was priced at $179 — which was pretty affordable even in those days — and featured top-of-the-line specs including a Qualcomm MSM7201A processor, 192MB of RAM, and 256MB of internal storage (expandable up to 16GB). It also stocked a 3.15MP rear camera, and a 1,150mAh battery.
i was in the root/rom community for a decade & anytime i see anything about classic android i get nostalgic af. while i was a bit too late to own an htc dream, i still boot up my lg optimus v running android 2.2 (well, it was on a 4.4 rom at one point but i flashed it back to stock) every few years. while i don’t miss the horrible ui, bugginess, slowness & clunkiness of android before 4.x, at the same time… i also kinda do for whatever reason lol. not enough to actually go back to it, but still. something about that white status bar, square icons & the overall mismashed together ui made of gray headerbars on top of white & black feels pleasant in a way i can’t explain.
I wish there was a launcher on Android that, for novelty reasons, would emulate old android.
while i’m not aware of any new launcher being made in the style of old android, the good news is that thanks to android’s strong backwards compatibility policy basically any old (non-system) launcher app should theoretically still work 100% on the latest android version, so you should be able to just find a non-sketchy link to an old version of your favorite aosp-based launcher & try it out.
if you’re interested in some #holoyolo or #praiseduarte nostalgia, there’s actually a dev who still has what’s basically old versions of Launcher2 on the play store. i tested those & some other old 4.x launchers back when i was on android 11 (& re-tested the ones on the play store just now on android 13) &, though android warns you it’s an ancient app & gives you the old marshmallow permission screen, they still work fine! (well, aside from new android things like tall aspect ratio, work integration, hole punches, the new default system, etc. for obvious reasons)