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Home / News / The Google Phone of 2006 revealed

The Google Phone of 2006 revealed

Oracle vs Google court documents reveal early renders of Google's original phone

Way back in 2006 – two years before the arrival of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 – Google showed off early designs for a Google Phone to carriers. Those early renders have now resurfaced in the courtroom as part of the ongoing Google vs Oracle copyright case over Java.

Specific specs for the portrait-format QWERTY phone aren’t listed, but Google’s baseline Android specs – remember this was six years ago – were a whopping 200MHz ARMv9 processor, 64MB RAM, 3G and a 2MP camera, alongside USB support, Bluetooth 1.2 and a miniSD slot, with a 16-bit QVGA display. How far we’ve come since then.

Still, Google was thinking ahead. Back in 2006 it the big G already had several proto-Android apps up and running, including the browser, dialer, messaging and contacts.

Android’s looking a lot more sophisticated now, thankfully. And its next iteration, Android 5.0 Jelly Bean is looming ever closer – hooray for the march of progress.

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home