[exsf0859]

Those quotes are entirely compatible with "not really".

Chris is talking about the Sooner: https://www.androidcentral.com/look-back-google-sooner-first.... It was called Sooner because it was going to come to market "sooner" than the other, more advanced, Dream prototype. After the iPhone announcement Sooner was canceled, in favor of the "Dream" prototype, which eventually shipped in a modified form as the G1.

The _software_ difference between non-touch Sooner and the touch-capable G1 were relatively minor. Same OS, same view system, same application framework.

As I recall, Chris's role at the time was as a UX focused engineer, so perhaps from his POV it was a massive redesign. But if you consider Android as a whole, relatively little changed. I recall the apps being pretty easy to port over to support touch. (Moving to a bigger screen helped offset the problem of having to make the buttons way larger.)