Android as an operating system has changed dramatically since it was first acquired by Google in 2005, and along with it so has the phone hardware that it runs on. Every Android fan knows about the T-Mobile G1 (aka the HTC Dream) as the first Android-powered phone made available to consumers, but before that milestone was this, the "Sooner."

Sooner was Google and Andy Rubin's first vision of what an Android phone would be. It was built as an engineering prototype for testing the first builds of consumer-facing Android in conjunction with HTC starting in 2006, and come 2007 T-Mobile got on board as a testing partner.

As is plain to see, Sooner followed the then-modern ideas of what a smartphone should look like, with a blocky design, small non-touch screen, dedicated calling keys, menu/back/home navigational buttons, and a big focus on communication. The screen had a 320-by-240 resolution, it had a whopping 64MB of RAM and offered a GPRS data connection. And, yes, it had a camera (just 1.3MP), a removable battery, and even an SD card slot.

Even though the Sooner hardware was finalized, the software was regularly in flux.

Even when the Sooner hardware was finalized, the software remained regularly in flux. Google was trying new things with Android, trying to figure out what worked best for the full experience on Sooner. Though the OS is hardly recognizable even compared to the likes of Android Jelly Bean, lots of the tentpole features were there — a unified notification center, Google Talk, Google search, a full web browser, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps and more all ran on Sooner.

In fact, I was able to pop a SIM in a Sooner and watch it still run today — receiving text messages, making searches on Google and checking out calendar entries from back in 2007.