The History of Android

With the addition of our latest Android courses for Developers, Joe looks back at the history of Android and it's evolution to become the  best-selling smartphone platform... 

Palo Alto California, October 2003 was the birth of Android Inc. Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White “secretly” worked on Android only revealing to the public that they were working on software for mobile phones. Not knowing much about Android at the time, on August 17^th 2005 Google acquired Android Inc. This made Android Inc a wholly owned subsidiary of Google Inc.

23^rd September 2008 was the day of release for the first Android device, the HTC Dream (G1) which had Android 1.0 on it.  Some of the features of Android 1.0 were:

• That it was integrated with Google Services
• Android market app downloads and updates.
• Multitasking, instant messaging, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The next major update was the release of Android 1.5 'Cupcake'. The update included:

• Faster Camera start-up and image capture.
• Much faster acquisition of GPS location.
• On-screen soft keyboard.
• Directly upload videos to YouTube and Picassa

This update was released in April 2009

Androids next up-date “Donut” was released in September 2009 and came with some very nice additions to the previous version:

• Quick Search Box and Voice Search
• Integrated camera, camcorder and gallery
• CDMA Support
• Multilingual Text-To-Speech function

As winter approached in October 2009 It was time for “Eclair” to be released. The changes for Android 2.0 were:

• Multiple accounts for email and contact synchronization
• Microsoft Exchange Support for syncing of e-mail
• Bluetooth 2.1 support
• New browser user interface and support for HTML5
• New calendar features

May 2010 was the release of Android 2.2 “Froyo”. This update was packed with user friendly updates such as:

• New tips widget for home screen
• Improved Exchange support
• Multiple keyboard languages 
• Adobe Flash 10.1

The heart of winter brought out the “Gingerbread” Android 2.3. Communication was a focus in this update.

• UI refinements for simplicity and speed
• New keyboard for faster text input
• One-touch word selection and copy/paste
• Near Field Communication
• Internet Calling

 February 2011 the first Tablet only update release, Android 3.0 “Honeycomb”, featured:

• Specifically optimized for tablets
• Refined multitasking, rich notifications, home screen customization and updated widgets
• Bluetooth tethering
• Built-in support for media/picture transfer protocol

October 2011saw the release of Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, which is the most recent release to date and updates included:

• Enhanced speed and performance
• Easier-to-create folders, with a drag-and-drop style
• A customizable launcher
• Ability to access apps directly from lock screen (similar to HTC Sense 3.x)
• Better voice integration and continuous, real-time speech to text dictation
• 1080p video recording for stock Android devices

These are just a few of the changes in each of the different releases of the Android operating system.The Android operating system is constantly evolving, enabling for greater things to be done on an android device. Android entered the market as a new mobile operating system in September 2008, in 2010 Android was listed as the best-selling smartphone platform worldwide. This is a huge statement of what Android is delivering.

Our latests Android courses for developers an technology managers and strategists can be found here.