What an extended, unusual commute it is been.
From its inaugural unencumber to right this moment, Android has reworked visually, conceptually and functionally — time and time once more. Google’s cellular working components could have began out scrappy, however holy moly, has it ever developed.
Here is a fast paced excursion of Android model highlights from the platform’s delivery to provide. (Be happy to skip forward for those who simply wish to see what’s new in Android 12 or Android 13.)
Android variations 1.0 to at least one.1: The early days
Android made its respectable public debut in 2008 with Android 1.0 — a unencumber so historic it did not also have a lovely codename.
Issues had been beautiful elementary again then, however the tool did come with a set of early Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Calendar, and YouTube, all of that have been built-in into the working components — a stark distinction to the more easily updatable standalone-app model hired right this moment.
T-CellThe Android 1.0 house display and its rudimentary internet browser (no longer but referred to as Chrome).
Android model 1.5: Cupcake
With early 2009’s Android 1.5 Cupcake unencumber, the custom of Android model names was once born. Cupcake presented a lot of refinements to the Android interface, together with the primary on-screen keyboard — one thing that’d be essential as telephones moved clear of the once-ubiquitous bodily keyboard fashion.
Cupcake additionally introduced concerning the framework for third-party app widgets, which might briefly develop into one among Android’s maximum distinguishing parts, and it supplied the platform’s first-ever possibility for video recording.
Android Police (CC BY-SA 4.0)Cupcake was once all concerning the widgets.
Android model 1.6: Donut
Android 1.6, Donut, rolled into the sector within the fall of 2009. Donut stuffed in some necessary holes in Android’s heart, together with the facility for the OS to perform on plenty of other display sizes and resolutions — an element that’d be essential within the future years. It additionally added improve for CDMA networks like Verizon, which might play a key position in Android’s coming near near explosion.
GoogleAndroid’s common seek field made its first look in Android 1.6.
Android variations 2.0 to two.1: Eclair
Maintaining the breakneck unencumber tempo of Android’s early years, Android 2.0, Eclair, emerged simply six weeks after Donut; its “point-one” replace, often known as Eclair, got here out a pair months later. Eclair was once the primary Android unencumber to go into mainstream awareness because of the original Motorola Droid telephone and the huge Verizon-led advertising marketing campaign surrounding it.
Verizon’s “iDon’t” advert for the Droid.
The discharge’s maximum transformative part was once the addition of voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation and real-time visitors data — one thing in the past unparalleled (and nonetheless necessarily unrivaled) within the smartphone international. Navigation apart, Eclair introduced are living wallpapers to Android in addition to the platform’s first speech-to-text serve as. And it made waves for injecting the once-iOS-exclusive pinch-to-zoom capacity into Android — a transfer steadily observed because the spark that ignited Apple’s long-lasting “thermonuclear war” in opposition to Google.
GoogleThe primary variations of turn-by-turn navigation and speech-to-text, in Eclair.
Android model 2.2: Froyo
Simply 4 months after Android 2.1 arrived, Google served up Android 2.2, Froyo, which revolved in large part round under-the-hood efficiency enhancements.
Froyo did ship some necessary front-facing options, regardless that, together with the addition of the now-standard dock on the backside of the house display in addition to the primary incarnation of Voice Movements, which allowed you to accomplish elementary purposes like getting instructions and making notes through tapping an icon after which talking a command.
GoogleGoogle’s first genuine try at voice regulate, in Froyo.
Particularly, Froyo additionally introduced improve for Flash to Android’s internet browser — an possibility that was once vital each on account of the standard use of Flash on the time and on account of Apple’s adamant stance against supporting it by itself cellular units. Apple would in the end win, in fact, and Flash would turn into a ways much less commonplace. However again when it was once nonetheless far and wide, with the ability to get admission to the whole internet with none black holes was a genuine advantage solely Android may just be offering.
Android model 2.3: Gingerbread
Android’s first true visible id began getting into center of attention with 2010’s Gingerbread release. Vivid inexperienced had lengthy been the colour of Android’s robotic mascot, and with Gingerbread, it changed into an integral a part of the working components’s look. Black and inexperienced seeped in all places the UI as Android began its sluggish march towards unique design.
JR Raphael / IDGIt was once simple being inexperienced again within the Gingerbread days.
Android 3.0 to three.2: Honeycomb
2011’s Honeycomb length was once a peculiar time for Android. Android 3.0 got here into the sector as a tablet-only unencumber to accompany the release of the Motorola Xoom, and during the next 3.1 and three.2 updates, it remained a tablet-exclusive (and closed-source) entity.
Below the steering of newly arrived design leader Matias Duarte, Honeycomb presented a dramatically reimagined UI for Android. It had a space-like “holographic” design that traded the platform’s trademark inexperienced for blue and positioned an emphasis on profiting from a pill’s display area.
JR Raphael / IDGHoneycomb: When Android were given a case of the holographic blues.
Whilst the concept that of a tablet-specific interface did not remaining lengthy, a lot of Honeycomb’s concepts laid the groundwork for the Android we all know right this moment. The tool was once the primary to make use of on-screen buttons for Android’s major navigational instructions; it marked the beginning of the end for the everlasting overflow-menu button; and it presented the concept that of a card-like UI with its take at the Contemporary Apps listing.
Android model 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich
With Honeycomb performing because the bridge from outdated to new, Ice Cream Sandwich — additionally launched in 2011 — served because the platform’s respectable access into the generation of contemporary design. The discharge subtle the visible ideas presented with Honeycomb and reunited pills and telephones with a single, unified UI vision.
ICS dropped a lot of Honeycomb’s “holographic” look however stored its use of blue as a system-wide spotlight. And it carried over core components parts like on-screen buttons and a card-like look for app-switching.
JR Raphael / IDGThe ICS house display and app-switching interface.
Android 4.0 additionally made swiping a extra integral way of having across the working components, with the then-revolutionary-feeling skill to swipe away such things as notifications and up to date apps. And it began the sluggish strategy of bringing a standardized design framework — known as “Holo” — all all through the OS and into Android’s app ecosystem.
Android variations 4.1 to 4.3: Jelly Bean
Unfold throughout 3 impactful Android variations, 2012 and 2013’s Jelly Bean releases took ICS’s contemporary basis and made significant strides in fine-tuning and construction upon it. The releases added plenty of poise and polish into the working components and went far in making Android extra inviting for the typical consumer.
Visuals apart, Jelly Bean led to our first style of Google Now — the impressive predictive-intelligence software that is unfortunately since devolved into a glorified news feed. It gave us expandable and interactive notifications, an expanded voice seek components, and a extra complicated components for exhibiting seek ends up in common, with a focal point on card-based effects that tried to reply to questions at once.
Multiuser improve additionally got here into play, albeit on pills solely at this level, and an early model of Android’s Fast Settings panel made its first look. Jelly Bean ushered in a closely hyped components for placing widgets on your lock screen, too — one who, like so many Android features over the years, quietly disappeared a pair years later.
JR Raphael / IDGJelly Bean’s Fast Settings panel and short-lived lock display widget characteristic.
Android model 4.4: KitKat
Overdue-2013’s KitKat unencumber marked the top of Android’s darkish generation, because the blacks of Gingerbread and the blues of Honeycomb in any case made their manner out of the working components. Lighter backgrounds and extra impartial highlights took their puts, with a clear standing bar and white icons giving the OS a extra recent look.
Android 4.4 additionally noticed the primary model of “OK, Google” improve — however in KitKat, the hands-free activation recommended labored solely when your display was once already on and you had been both at your house display or within the Google app.
The discharge was once Google’s first foray into claiming a complete panel of the house display for its services and products, too — a minimum of, for customers of its personal Nexus telephones and people who selected to obtain its first-ever standalone launcher.
JR Raphael / IDGThe lightened KitKat house display and its devoted Google Now panel.
Android variations 5.0 and 5.1: Lollipop
Google necessarily reinvented Android — once more — with its Android 5.0 Lollipop release within the fall of 2014. Lollipop introduced the still-present-today Material Design standard, which introduced a complete new glance that prolonged throughout all of Android, its apps or even different Google merchandise.
The cardboard-based idea that have been scattered all through Android changed into a core UI development — one that may information the illusion of the whole lot from notifications, which now confirmed up at the lock display for at-a-glance get admission to, to the Contemporary Apps listing, which took on an unabashedly card-based look.
JR Raphael / IDGLollipop and the onset of Subject matter Design.
Lollipop presented a slew of recent options into Android, together with in point of fact hands-free voice regulate by means of the “OK, Google” command, improve for more than one customers on telephones and a concern mode for higher notification control. It modified such a lot, sadly, that it additionally presented a bunch of troubling bugs, a lot of which would not be totally ironed out till the next 12 months’s 5.1 unencumber.
