A Brief History of Android
Prologue
The year is 2007 and Steve Jobs announced the release of the first iPhone. The iPhone was the first to introduce a multi-touch display into a smartphone, something that nobody ever dreamt of. This took the smartphone industry by storm. Leading industry giants like Symbian would become obsolete in a few years. In the midst of all this, a small company called Android Inc. would rise to become the world leader in the smartphone industry, a company that Google bought, even though it wasn’t the huge tech giant it is now.
Seeds
Our story starts in the Cayman Islands in 1989 where Andy Rubin was on a vacation. One fine morning on the beach, Andy found a man asleep on a chair. After inquiring about the particular state of affairs of the man, Andy understood that he was none other than Bill Caswell, one of the leading software engineers of Apple. Bill was kicked out of his own beach house by his girlfriend. Andy gave the man a place to stay and soon after Andy would get a job at Apple.
Andy was very famous for developing side projects with robotics that earned him the name ‘Android’ by his co-workers. After working in Apple for a few years, Andy went on to work for General Magic. After his work there, Andy left General Magic to start his own company Danger Inc. Andy then created the Danger Hiptop or the T-Mobile sidekick a popular smartphone among rich teenagers. Up until then, smartphones were considered to be a gadget for work. So the Hiptop was a moderate success with teenagers. Despite the outcome of the Hiptop, the Co-Founder of Google, Larry Page, took a very keen interest in Hiptop because the default search engine was in fact, Google. Google was still behind the likes of Yahoo Search and AOL back during the day, so when Google was offered as a search engine, Larry was pleasantly surprised.
Giants and Would be Giants
Back in the day Carrier companies held exclusive rights to smartphones. They decided on the marketing, features, design, and of course, the pricing. Symbian was the most popular OS with carrier companies using them for smartphones. It was very difficult for a newcomer with a brand new OS to break into the system. Google was waiting for an opportunity to enter into the smartphone business but didn’t find any right medium to brand and market its products. In 2007, Apple had signed an exclusive deal with AT&T as the only carrier for the iPhone. The other carrier companies didn’t want AT&T to monopolize the business and they were waiting for the right opportunity to make sure that they still held their ground.
The Open Handset Alliance was the initiative spearheaded by Google in 2007 to include hardware manufacturers, carriers, and chipset makers to manufacture phones based on the Android operating system. This was to counter the exclusivity of Apple’s iPhone with respect to its hardware, OS, and ability to make calls. Their goal was to develop “the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices”.
The Sale
Andy quit Danger Inc. to start Android Inc. He started working with his friends Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White on an operating system for advanced digital cameras. By the end of that year, he realized that it would be wise to work on an operating system for smartphones due to the decline of the digital camera industry. After facing a lot of difficulties initially, Andy finally got his big break when Google bought the company for $50 million in June 2005. Andy and his friends joined Google and started working on Android.
The year is 2007 and the iPhone had taken the world by storm. Google had to go back to square one. All the effort that was made until now wasn’t close enough to combat the iPhone. They had to introduce the touch feature into their devices. Google and the Android team went back to work and in September 2008 the first smartphone running Android entered the market, the HTC Dream also known as the T-Mobile G1. The HTC Dream was released with a lot of mixed reviews. It was praised for its open-source nature, notification system, and Google Services. It received a lot of criticism for its lack of certain functionality and third-party software.
The Steady Rise
From here, there was no looking back for Android and Google. With each version, there were loads of improvements to the operating system with the addition of new features and numerous bug fixes. From version 1.5 they started naming the subsequent versions with names of various desserts. 1.5 was Cupcake, 1.6 was Donut, 2.0 was Eclair, 2.2 was Froyo, 2.3 was Gingerbread, 3.0 was Honeycomb, 4.0 was Icecream sandwich, 4.1 was Jellybean, 4.4 was Kitkat, 5.0 was Lollipop, 6.0 was Marshmallow, 7.0 was Nougat, 8.0 was Oreo, 9.0 was Pie, 10 was, well, just 10. Android stopped naming their versions with desserts with Android 10. They argued that their international users were not able to relate very well to this and all the desserts starting with Q were quite exotic. The latest version of Android is Android 12.
By mid 2009 the market share of Android was less than 10%. But Android scored its first victory with the Motorola Droid. From then, Android started selling very quickly. By May 2010, Android had already surpassed iPhone’s market share and by the end of the year, it was the World’s most popular Operating System. Android holds this title to this day.
Versions and Features
Android 1.5 Cupcake
- April 2009
- Auto-rotate
Android 1.6 Donut
- September 2009
- Support for CDMA
- Quick Search Box
- Power Control Widget
Android 2.0 Eclair
- October 2009
- Text to Speech
- Multiple Account Support
- Navigation
- Live Wallpaper support
Android 2.2 Froyo
- March 2010
- Wifi Mobile Hotspot
- Adobe Flash support
- Push notifications
Android 2.3 Gingerbread
- December 2010
- Major design updates
- Support for NFC
- Multiple Carrier
Android 3.0 HoneyComb
- February 2011
- Made purely for Tablets
- Design updates
Android 4.0 IceCream Sandwich
- October 2011
- LTE enabling
- On-screen navigation buttons
- Face Unlocking
Android 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 Jelly Bean
- June 2012
- Google Now
- Suggestions and Recommendations
- Faster and Smoother Experience
Android 4.4 Kitkat
- October 2013
- Optimized to run on phones with lesser RAM
- Changes to Theme
Android 5.0 Lollipop
- November 2014
- Material Design
- New notification panel
- Lock screen notifications
- Redesign of soft keys
Android 6.0 Marshmellow
- October 2015
- Vertical Scrolling App Drawer
- Google Now on Tap
- Fingerprint Unlock
- USB Type C Support
- Android Pay
Android 7.0 Nougat
- August 2016
- Native Split Screen support
- Better Gaming and Graphics Experience
- Bigger Screens for phones
Android 8.0 Oreo
- March 2017
- New Settings Menu
- Adaptive Icons
- Picture in Picture Mode
Android 9.0 Pie
- August 2018
- Hybrid Gesture / Button Navigation System
- Digital Wellbeing
- Various privacy and Security features
Android 10
- March 2019
- No Dessert Name
- Swipe drive system navigation
- System-wide Dark theme
Android 11
- September 2020
- Stronger security features
- Refined Notifications
Android 12
- Beta Available
- Material You
- Redesigned Widgets
- Efficient System Performance
Epilogue
Everything changed for Andy and Android Inc after Google bought it in 2005. Since then there was no turning back for Google. All this has been achieved in not more than 16 years. Android has been the dominating market leader of smartphone devices since 2011. It also has over 2 billion users around the world. It is an exciting time for android with more innovative features being added with every new version. Android is here to stay for a good amount of time and learning about Android and how it works is worth your time not only because of its interesting history but because you might be doing it in one. :)
