Android, the operating system that runs on 88% of all smartphones today has turned eleven years old. Today marks the 11th anniversary of the first Android beta to the public. A week later, the SDK and a ton of information about the OS came out.
The official release didn’t happen until nearly a year later when, on September 23, 2008, Android version 1.0 became commercially available on the HTC Dream. Let’s go down the memory lane, shall we?
1.5 Cupcake and 1.6 Donut
The first release with the name of a dessert, 1.5 Cupcake came out with support for third-party virtual keyboards, widgets, video recording, copy-paste in the web browser, and auto-rotate. 1.6 Donut followed with support for users to select multiple photos for deletion.
2.0 Eclair and 2.2 Froyo
2.0 Eclair came with Bluetooth 2.1 support, digital zoom, ability to search all saved SMS, and the addition of live wallpapers. 2.2 Froyo came with some optimizations, USB tethering and hotspot functionality, and adobe flash support.
2.3 Gingerbread and 3.0 Honeycomb
2.3 Gingerbread came with a download manager, NFC support, and the first easter egg: an image of the Bugdroid standing next to a zombie gingerbread man, with many more zombies in the background. 3.0 Honeycomb was developed primarily for tablets and came with simplified multitasking, a redesigned keyboard, and support for multicore processors.
4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and 4.1 Jelly Bean
4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich came with face unlock, a data usage section in settings, Android Beam, and 1080p video recording support. 4.1 Jelly Bean came with expandable notifications, screensavers, and group messaging.
4.4 KitKat and 5.0 Lollipop
4.4 KitKat came with support for wireless printing and a refreshed interface. Then came 5.0 Lollipop, arguably the biggest change to Android ever. It brought Material Design for the first time, smart lock, multiuser support, and flashlight support.
6.0 Marshmallow, 7.0 Nougat, and 8.0 Oreo
6.0 Marshmallow came with native fingerprint scanner support, an application search bar, USB-C support. 7.0 Nougat came with emergency information from the lock screen, Daydream for VR, multi-window support, and picture-in-picture. 8.0 Oreo came with a redesigned notification shade, circular app icons, fingerprint swipe down gesture support, Project Treble.
9.0 Pie
9.0 Pie came with a new settings menu interface, rounded corners across the UI, digital wellbeing, adaptive battery, gesture controls, and a machine learning powered auto brightness.
Android has taken steps forward, and some even backward, with every release of Android, but it’s definitely interesting to see how far it’s come.
Featured-Image:Â The Verge
