Time slowly advanced to January 2007. Following the historical timeline, Apple was set to officially hold a press conference this year to release their iPhone to the world, becoming the first company globally to launch a smartphone.
However, this title was no longer theirs. A month prior, in December 2006, Google had preemptively released its first smartphone, named after the company itself: the Google Phone.
This news wasn't entirely shocking, as there had been prior rumors of Google acquiring all of Jiangnan Group's PT technology. However, Google had not named its product according to Jiangnan Group's convention, instead opting for CP. Thus, this phone was also known as the Google CP.
Now, please don't misunderstand. This doesn't mean phones were starting to be marketed as CP pairings. In fact, foreigners at the time had no idea what CP meant. The term CP actually originated from Fusang (Japan), gradually becoming popular in China through its variety shows, leading to various CP pairings.
Americans had no idea what this "CP" business was about.
What Google referred to as CP actually meant co...
However, technical issues couldn't be solved with a mere command. The result was that over half a month, not a single phone could successfully complete its demonstration; various problems would inevitably pop up.
This was even more so on the day of the press conference. The event was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Although Apple brought its complete set of network equipment, the network environment inevitably changed significantly in a new venue. Their phones, unavoidably, experienced continuous disconnections, frequently losing network connectivity. This led to the failure of several dry runs before the press conference, leaving the entire department trembling.
In the end, it was our Boss Qiao who made the decision to use a demonstration video from a simulated shoot conducted at the company, playing it on the screens at the venue.
In other words, although Jobs was indeed holding a phone and gesturing on stage, appearing to operate it, the audience was all seated in the hall and could not see Jobs' phone screen firsthand. Therefore, it didn't matter how Jobs tapped the phone, because the screen was actually playing a previously filmed, most successful demonstration video, one that had been meticulously selected from hundreds of demonstration videos. It was guaranteed to be smooth.
Upon learning this truth, Page was furious and cursed, but there was nothing he could do. Even if Page himself went online and wrote lengthy posts, it would be useless. This was because over a year had passed, and no one truly cared about what happened at that demonstration conference a year ago. At most, it would just add some humor to the world.
However, a smooth system demonstration wasn't the fundamental difference between the two phones.
What truly astonished the world and created a complete distinction between the iPhone and the Google Phone was actually their screens.
In fact, the screen sizes and dimensions of these two phones were the same. Even their display resolutions were identical, as these screens were actually LED displays from the same series under Samsung.
But while these two displays belonged to the same series, they were not the same model because this series was divided into touch-enabled and non-touch-enabled versions.
Google used the non-touch-enabled version of the screen, while Apple used a touchpad.
The iPhone launched by Apple was almost identical to the historical iPhone. It featured a large display on the front, abandoning almost all physical buttons, leaving only the home button at the very bottom. Apple once again adopted full touchscreen control technology, marking a significant milestone in the history of mobile phones.
Google, using a non-touch screen, naturally could not abandon buttons. In fact, Google not only retained buttons but also greatly increased their number, eventually squeezing an almost complete 56-key computer keyboard into the phone.
Well, this was actually the side-sliding design used by the Jiangnan 5 phone, which Jiangnan had stopped updating three years prior but was hailed as an eternal classic and work of art from the feature phone era.
The Google phone's front still featured a complete screen, but users could slide it open to reveal the keyboard and control the phone directly with it.
Therefore, the Google phone was still a button-operated phone, not a full touchscreen phone.
As a new generation phone developed by Jiangnan Group, using Jiangnan Group's classic design was perfectly fine, there was nothing wrong with it.
Moreover, the market at the time favored button phones and was full of skepticism towards full touchscreen phones. Thus, Google's choice of full buttons presented no design issues; it could only be said to be a limitation of the era, incomparable to Jobs' vision.
It was precisely because of this that buttons versus touchscreens became the biggest feature and difference between these two CP phones released almost simultaneously, making them the most hyped and least-selling phones in the world at the time.