Today we’re going to get a little gyaan about Android, how it all started and how it has fared till now in the market. All the BSNL tab were running on Android OS.
Android Inc. was founded by Andy Rubin (now pioneer head of Android development in Google) and his colleagues in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003. They wanted to develop “…smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences”. It was later acquired by Google on 17 August 2005, while hiring Andy and his other two friends to take the vision ahead. Android OS is now running on camera also. See Android Camera for more details.
As the iPhone hit the market in July 2007, there became a large number of players who has proprietary operating systems, namely Symbian, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, Palm OS and the iOS itself. The users had limited number of choices, all of who in one way or the other, arm twisted the user into passing through a learning curve of doing a simple thing of operating a phone. Moreover, smartphones were not everyone’s cup of tea. Only the black suited corporate afficados could dare to possess one and each one would flaunt of having one.
With the introduction of iPhone, Apple sent out a message that smartphones were not only a luxury of business or corporate people. It is more than just a phone and more of a portable computer which can be useful in every walk of life and can be useful for just about anyone.
The Opensource community then decided that it’s time one should bring out a more open, at the same time, more robust operating system to the consumer for greater good. Hence, Google along with Open Handset Alliance (which includes really big names coming in collaboration, HTC, LG, Sony, Motorola, Samsung forming the initial lead, later followed by Asus, Garmin, Huawei, Toshiba, Dell and rest of others) released Android development project platform on 12 November, 2007.
The first commercially available Android phone was launched and approved by FCC about an year later, on 18 August 2008. It was designed and made by HTC and named HTC Dream. It had Android 1.0, which was devoid of any code name. The Android is built around Linux kernel, which in itself is very stable and secure platform. Every time the Android’s new version is released, the kernel is also tweaked a little to bring in more support for features.
The first version of android from day one had support for Android Market, pre-loaded Google Maps, YouTube video player, Gmail app and loads of other stuff.
The subsequent versions brought even more “flavors” of Android by bringing great updates each time to the already rock-solid OS.
Versions of Android are written in short below along with their release dates and their flagship phones:
3rd December 2009 & 12th January 2010
| 23rd September, 2008 | Android 1.0 | HTC Dream |
| 30th April, 2009 | v1.5 (Cupcake | HTC Dream |
| 15th September 2009 | v1.6(Donut) | T-Mobile My Touch |
| 26th October 2009 | v2.0 (Éclair) | Motorola Milestone |
| Android 2.0.1 & 2.1 SDK was released. | ||
| 20th May 2010 | v2.2 (Frozen Yoghurt or FroYo) | Samsung Nexus S |
| 10th May 2011 | v3.0 (Honeycomb) | Motorola Xoom |
| 19th October 2011 | v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) | Samsung Galaxy Nexus |
NOTE: DID YOU KNOW THAT ANDROID VERSIONS ARE NAMED AFTER EVERYTHING WHICH IS SWEET IN TASTE?
The newest version of Android now, as you might already know, is Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). It is a complete makeover of Android in terms of user interface and features it offered. Though, it requires very high-end specs for mobile devices to run the 4th iteration of Android.
A large number of Android users are right now either using v2.2 or v2.3 of Android.
Tell us which version of Android you are using and discuss it in the forum.
