Android was not a Touchscreen platform in the Pre Apple Era

New documents filed in the never ending Apple vs Samsung battle have revealed that Google’s plans for Android back in 2006 involved physical keys for control and no touchscreen input support.

Google vice president of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer, walked the jury through early development of Android and said engineers actually tried to make software that was very different from Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. He emphasised that the company liked to have its own identity and ideas, adding that it was very passionate about what it was doing, and it was important that it had its own ideas.

According to the file “the product [Android] was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption. However, there is nothing fundamental in the product’s architecture that prevents the support of touchscreen in the future.”

A lot of differentiating factors also came into light, including  removable storage, third-party application support, widgets, notifications and all those Google services. The design of the 2006 Android beta build lacked touchscreen and required cursors and physical keys, this was changed to a “Touchscreen Required” minimum, in 2007 post the launch of the first Apple iPhone.