The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is yet to be officially announced, and as we patiently wait for its inception, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and Google’s Senior Vice President of Devices and Services, Rick Osterloh, proudly showed off the world’s first Android smartphone to showcase how far the industry has come. Those who were old enough to daily drive the device know the HTC Dream vividly, and even though the company no longer produces smartphones, there was a time when the brand was held in high regard.
The Snapdragon Summit had an actual working HTC Dream on stage, with images showing an illuminated display; impressive for a smartphone that is now 17 years old
The keynote is currently available to view on YouTube, and if you tap on the 42:00 time stamp, Qualcomm’s Amon surprised Osterloh and the audience when he whipped out the HTC Dream. The chipset maker’s Chief Executive states that work on Android with Google commenced in 2026, so it would take a few years before an actual product materialized. The world’s first Android smartphone was also called the T-Mobile G1 in the U.S., and it is shown to be holding a charge and is in proper working condition.
For those who did not have an opportunity to try out the first family of Android smartphones should know that the HTC Dream shipped with a physical keyboard sporting a QWERTY layout, while also supporting touch-based controls thanks to its 3.2-inch capacitive LCD that sports a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels. With the smartphone now being 17 years old, Amon still attempted to update it to the latest version of Android, but admits on stage that his efforts were futile.
The HTC Dream was also equipped with a Qualcomm MSM7201A SoC running at a clock speed of 528MHz, along with 192MB of RAM and 256MB internal storage. Looking at the Android-powered handsets coming out of the factories at this time, it is almost uncanny to believe that this device set the stage for the biggest mobile operating system in the world. It is a nice piece of history shared by Amon and Osterloh, and we were happy to be a part of it.