T-Mobile G1: The first Android phone never looked so good

The innocence! The horror! Seeing the ten-year-old T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream) now is like staring at your embarrassing yearbook photos.

Jessica Dolcourt

Oct. 19, 2018 11:55 a.m. PT

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Angela Lang/CNET

The world's first Android phone, the HTC Dream, known in the US as the T-Mobile G1, is 10 years old. Compared with the giant phones of today, the G1 looks like it came from another planet. And even a decade ago, its design was, well, a bit weird.

Read: Android turns 10 -- what we learned a decade later

This story originally published Sept. 21, 2018 and was updated Oct. 19.

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Angela Lang/CNET

The first version of Android wasn't known by a sweet dessert name -- that didn't come until Android 1.5 Cupcake in 2009.

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Angela Lang/CNET

Now in version 9, Android Pie, Google's mobile OS is sophisticated and mature. Part of what makes the Android of the G1 so special is exactly how new it was. This baby Android lacked the identity we know so well today.

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Angela Lang/CNET

The T-Mobile G1 stands 4.6 inches tall, with a 3.2-inch screen.

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Angela Lang/CNET

There's a track ball in the center for navigation, plenty of physical buttons and a slide-out landscape QWERTY keyboard.

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Angela Lang/CNET

It looked like this when you made a call. And yes, people in 2008 made a lot more calls.

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Angela Lang/CNET

The landscape keyboard meant you had to turn the phone sideways every time you wanted to type -- the original G1 didn't launch with a virtual keyboard.

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Angela Lang/CNET

The keys were flat and well spaced. Editors differed in their opinion of the G1 as a typing machine.

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Angela Lang/CNET

Android phones have always had app trays, a separate place to index all your programs. This differed from the first-generation iPhone launched a year before the G1, which, like today, lays all the icons on the home screen.

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Angela Lang/CNET

Take a look at the pixels. The G1's screen 480x320-pixel resolution of 180.3. Today, high-end phones have a pixel density in the 500s.

remembering the first Google Android Phone: HTC T Mobile G1

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Android phones supported folders and GPS from the very beginning.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

There was also an Android Market at at launch.

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Angela Lang/CNET

The phone's chin was a major characteristic. It's supposed to ergonomically curve to meet your chin, but some of us found it unsightly, and thought it got in the way of typing.