The Green Revolution: A Look On the History of Android
“The Green Revolution refers to a set of research and the development of technology transfer initiatives occurring between the 1930s and the late 1960s (with prequels in the work of the agrarian geneticist Nazareno Strampelli in the 1920s and 1930s), that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.”
Android has been a great mobile OS for users and developers since its first launch. Whether to be its user friendly GUI or the powerful features that comes with it by each new release, one does not have to think much on why Android has become so successful. Android was what we call as The Green Revolution of the mobile world and it shaped the present and the future of not just mobile technologies but many technologies touching human’s life.
While enjoying Android for many years as a user as it has created similar effects on human world as the original Green Revolution, I have been made use of it as a developer as well. In that very first post of mine, I will be looking at the brief history of Android OS and discussing how Google has revolutionarized the mobile world with Android.
The history of Android can be more or less summarized as follows.
September, 2008 — First Android smarphone is anounced with Android 1.0
April, 2009 — Android 1.5, “Cupcake” is released
September, 2009— Android 1.6, “Donut” is released
October, 2009— Android 2.0, “Eclair” is released, version 2.1 followed
May, 2010— Android 2.2, “Froyo” is released, versions followed up to 2.2.3
December, 2010— Android 2.3, “Gingerbread” is released, versions followed up to 2.3.7
February, 2011— Android 3.0, “Honeycomb” is released, versions followed up to 3.2.6
October, 2011— Android 4.0, “Ice Cream Sandwich” is released, versions followed up to 4.0.4
July, 2012— Android 4.1, “Jelly Bean” is released, versions followed up to 4.3.1
October, 2013— Android 4.4, “Kitkat” is released, versions followed up to 4.4.4
November, 2014— Android 5.0, “Lollipop” is released, versions followed up to 5.1.1
Material Design was first introduced in Lollipop
October, 2015— Android 6.0, “Marshmallow” is released, versions followed up to 6.0.1
August, 2016— Android 7.0, “Nougat” is released, versions followed up to 7.1.2
August, 2017— Android 8.0, “Oreo” is released
The image below is a good illustration for Android journey.
With each release, we are introduced many features or tools. More importantly, this process also has shaped the technology and the way we live. Back in 2008, to be able to connect to the internet from mobile was a luxury. Today, we each carry a very powerful device in our pocket that can assist you via your voice with its AI capability, navigate you to whereever you need to go, enable you Augmented Reality(AR) & Virtual Reality(VR) and do many other great things. As smartphone technology has gone that far, tablets, smartwatches, home devices, VR headsets and other accessories has found a good opportunity to be able to get a marketshare.
“It is neither the strongest of the species nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
Of course the rise of Android was not bloodless. Lets return to pre-Android times: the two of the dominant brands in mobile phone market was Nokia and Blackberry and Samsung was not as popular as of these two. Now the latter one is pretty much dominant in the mobile phone market. I believe that the rise of Android has a significant effect on this scene to be created. Nokia and Blackberry could not adapt themselves to make use of the new game-changer and rise with Android. Nevertheless, Samsung has read the situation very well and developed its adaptation strategies not just to survive but to go further with the help of it. To go further, Apple, the other competent in mobile market has many reasons to thank Google. Event a company as Apple has benefited from its race with Google a lot. On the other hand, one thing that is to be noted: Google has to thank Apple too, for sure. At the end, it was Google and Apple that have played the major role to get the today of the mobile world.
By that portion of time in which Android has created massive effects, end-user expectetations and behaviours have changed parallel to the mobile world. Social media mostly shaped the user’s way of living, while Android has hosted/fed social media together with IOS. Today, we are not who we were 10 years ago and it is a sea change thanks to Android.
To summarize, Android has been a milestone for mobile world history. Continuosly evolving, it has been making things change in a ‘green’ way by introducing many great technologies, shaping the market, changing user behaviours and definitely giving humanity new visions every day.
