With the launch of the built-for-tablet Android Honeycomb 3.0 OS just hours away, it seems the perfect time for Life of Android to take a gentle stroll down memory lane and give you a recap on the short but trailblazing history of the world’s best selling smartphone operating system: from its humble open source beginnings to world domination.
Android 1.0 Angel Cake
Released 23rd September 2008. This is where the dream began. The world’s first open source mobile OS gave manufacturers, developers and bedroom coders carte blanche to get creative with user-interface designs, widgets and apps. At this stage Google didn’t have an obsession with giving each OS release a cake-based moniker, so in the name of continuity we christen Android 1.0…Angel Cake.
Android 1.1 Battenberg
Released 9th February 2009. Again the alphabetical dessert OS nicknames hadn’t kicked in yet, so we’re calling 1.1 Battenberg. This update didn’t really bring many new stellar features to the table, instead just a few tweaks here and there, ironed out those pesky bugs and glitches and improved overall performance.
Android 1.5 Cupcake
Released 30th April 2009. This is where the updates started to get serious and Google raided its patisserie dictionary for OS codenames. Cupcake delivered video recording capabilities, the uploading of videos and snaps to YouTube and Picasa, Stereo Bluetooth (aka A2DP) so you can wirelessly stream music to compatible headphones or speakers, while the onscreen keyboard got text prediction.
Android 1.6 Donut
Released 15th September 2009. Donut brought more major features enhancements the biggest of which was Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation for gratis. The Android Market became a friendly place to shop for apps while voice and universal search facilities were sharper – to name but a few.
Android 2.0/2.1 Éclair
Released 26th October 2010. The naughty-but-nice-Éclair, didn’t serve up too many headline features but there was still enough to get excited about. The UI and browser were giving a revamp, phone cameras could now take snaps in lowlight thanks to built flash support and live wallpapers tarted up your homescreens with animation.
Android 2.2 Froyo
Released 20th May 2010. Froyo, short for Frozen Yogurt, broke the cake nickname rule (what was wrong with Fairy Cake or French Fancy?) but along with a general performance retune to improve the OS speed and support for hi-res, hi-def screen resolutions the two key feature introductions were USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot plus support for Adobe Flash 10.1 for watching videos from the phone’s web browser.
Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Released 6th December 2010. After the detour with frozen dairy products we’re back to familiar biscuit based OS upgrades with Gingerbread. The newest smartphone OS release sees Google introduce the much touted NFC (Near Field Communications) tech that will let you make mobile payments or swipe a poster tag to receive info and free goodies for example. Elsewhere internet calling contacts are integrated into your phonebook, app management has been improved while the virtual QWERTY is redesigned for more accurate typing.
Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Released 2nd February 2011. Finally we arrive at the latest made-for-tablet instalment. Google will feed us more details at the launch of Honeycomb 3.0 later today at 6pm but if you can’t wait until then why not check out our preview here. This concludes our Android history lesson.
J.W. Production
Reference: http://www.lifeofandroid.com/news_detail/a-brief-history-of-android-os/