<P> In the early to mid 2000s, it was common for smartphones to have a physical T9 numeric keypad or QWERTY keyboard in either a candybar or sliding form factor . At that time, many smartphones had resistive touchscreens, which allowed for input with a stylus in addition to fingers, thus allowing the entry of Asian characters . </P> <P> In early 2007, Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone, the first smartphone to use a capacitive multi-touch interface . (A year prior the LG Prada was the first mobile phone released with a large capacitive touchscreen, but it was not a smartphone, and its screen was not multi-touch .) The iPhone was notable for abandoning the use of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical for smartphones at the time, in favor of a large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction . Though one columnist described the initial iPhone as "not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed," the opening of Apple's App Store a year later not only satisfied this requirement, but it became the new main paradigm for smartphone software distribution and installation . </P> <P> In October 2008, the first phone to use Google's Android operating system called the HTC Dream (also known as the T - Mobile G1) was released . It also had a large touchscreen, but still retained a slide - out physical keyboard . Later versions of Android added and then improved on - screen keyboard support, and physical keyboards on Android devices quickly became rare . Although Android's adoption was relatively slow at first, it started to gain widespread popularity in 2010, and in early 2012 dominated the smartphone market share worldwide, which continues to this day . </P> <P> The iPhone and Android phones with their capacitive touchscreens changed smartphone form factors and led to the decline of earlier, keyboard - and keypad - focused platforms . Microsoft, for instance, discontinued Windows Mobile and started a new touchscreen - oriented OS from scratch, called Windows Phone . Nokia abandoned Symbian and partnered with Microsoft to use Windows Phone on its smartphones . Windows Phone became the third-most - popular smartphone OS, before being replaced by Windows 10 Mobile, which declined in share to become "largely irrelevant" at less than 0.5% of the smartphone market . Palm replaced their Palm OS with webOS, which was bought by Hewlett - Packard and later sold to LG Electronics for use on LG smart TVs . BlackBerry Limited, formerly known as Research In Motion, made a new platform based on QNX, BlackBerry 10, with which it was possible to control a device without having to press any physical buttons; this platform was later discontinued . </P>

When did the first android smart phone come out