Apple request that Google omit Multi Touch from the Android OS - Google Agrees

By Aaron Besson at 10 February, 2009, 5:55 pm

: Image via CrunchBase

The absence of multi-touch functionality on T-Mobile’s Android-powered G1 smartphone may have been a casualty of Google’s cordial relationship with Apple — one that the search giant would rather not disrupt.

An unnamed source inside the Android team told VentureBeat that Apple requested multi-touch be left out of the device, and Mountain View, Calif.-based Google was happy to comply.

The G1 has been criticized in several reviews for its touch user interface, which is “inferior to the iPhone’s,” as Walt Mossberg put it in his review for the Wall Street Journal. “It lacks the iPhone’s ability to flick between multiple pictures and Web pages, or to zoom in and zoom out of a photo or Web page by simply using two fingers to ‘pinch’ or expand the image,” Mossberg wrote.

“Unlike the iPhone, however, the G1’s touch screen isn’t multitouch, so you can’t zoom in and out of pages by pinching your fingers apart,” wrote CNET in its review. “Admittedly, we really missed this feature, since it makes viewing Web pages and pictures easy, but it’s not necessary.”

Gizmodo agreed, “Compared to the iPhone, it still loses, but this comes down to a lack of multitouch capability — on the G1, for instance, you zoom by clicking + and - magnifier buttons.”