Google had to `start over` Android after iPhone launch in 2007

Washington – Apple unveiled its first iPhone in 2007 and that prompted Google’s Android team to start over, a new book has reportedly revealed.

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein, has revealed that Apple’s first iPhone changed smartphones forever and Google was one of the first to realize how important the phone was.

According to Mashable, Google engineer Chris DeSalvo said that as soon as Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone to the world, he knew the Android team would need to ‘start over’.

The book described that for the six months before the iPhone release, DeSalvo, Android chief Andy Rubin and the rest of the Android team had been working on the platforms prototype phone for a launch that was planned for the end of 2007.

However, all the plans were scrapped in the wake of the iPhone because despite the Android software, cloud computing and multitasking in place, the phone itself was ‘ugly’ as it looked more like a BlackBerry than the sleek piece of metal and glass that Jobs had just unveiled.

The report said that the Android team then quickly switched gears to focus on a phone with a touchscreen, which would eventually become the HTC Dream, launched in fall 2008, months after the second-generation iPhone 3G would go on sale.