The first few Android versions did not have names for the OS releases. While some of these sound archaic these days, they were a big part of helping in Android’s rise in the marketplace at the time. It also boasted the first version of the “App Store” which was stated to have dozens of apps unique to the Android platform. What the phone did have was the Android 1.0 system which encompassed multiple products and services (as Google intended) including YouTube, Google Maps, and a browser (not yet Chrome). It did not exactly receive great reviews. The phone used a typical QWERTY physical keyboard with a 3.2-inch touchscreen and did not have a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, a mainstay in any current Android phone. (and as HTC Dream in other parts of the world). It was known as the T-Mobile G1 in the U.S. The very first Android smartphone was finally announced in 2008. It’s important to consider that in the early days of what we now consider mobile phone use, there was a lot of skepticism about touchscreen phones, at least until Apple dared to boldly venture into that market. It was reported that before the release to the public, Google had two alpha builds of the Android platform, including a blackberry style “Sooner” model which was never released at all. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt would announce that the company’s vision was to open up an operating system that would enable its operation with thousands of different phone models. Google kept quiet about their Android project at the time, but in November of that year, began to slowly leak plans to create its own version of a mobile platform. In 2007, Apple introduced the world to the iPhone and revolutionized the industry of mobile computing. Rubin made his return to the industry in 2017 however with the announcement of the “ Essential Phone.” Preparing for Android 1.0 Rubin remained as the head of Google’s Android team until 2013 when he left the division and left Google altogether the following year to pursue a startup business incubator. The feeling from the team and their owners was that they could make good money by offering the OS to other services that could use it (such as apps). They decided to use Linux as the primary basis of the Android OS, which meant that Android could be offered to third-party phone manufacturers free of charge. In 2005, Google purchased Android, Inc, while all of the founders stayed on to help develop the OS they were well into producing already. However, seeing that the market for standalone digital cameras was not exactly on the rise, a few short months later Android Inc shifted its goals to start work on mobile phone operating systems instead. Pitches made in 2004 included showing that the OS could connect cameras wirelessly to PCs, which in turn would connect to an “Android Datacenter” where the camera operators would be able to store their pictures on a cloud server. In fact, the Android OS was intended to improve the operating systems of digital cameras. In 2013, Andy Rubin gave a speech in Tokyo where he said that even though the founders did aim for “smarter devices”, Android’s intentions were not initially those for phones. The founding members aimed to make “smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences.” It had 4 primary founders: Chris White, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Andy Rubin. History of Androidīack in October 2003, years before Apple would unleash its first iOS on the world and long before the term “smartphone” would be a “thing”, a publicly funded startup in Palo Alto, CA called Android, Inc., came to fruition. Let’s take a look at the complete history of Android, starting from the very beginning, and see how much the most popular mobile OS on the planet has changed. It has since overrun nearly all competition (Palm OS, Windows Phone, Symbian, and Blackberry) to become one of the prevailing operating systems, with Apple’s iOS being the sole true competition in the OS realm, a fact that does not look like it will change at any time soon. Once the Android platform was purchased by Google and the decision was made to allow the OS to be open source, Android’s popularity has exploded among third-party phone developers.Īfter only a few years of launching Android 1.0, smartphones with the operating system flooded the tech market. In fact, it has been only about a decade since the first “official” Android phone was available for consumers at stores. You might be surprised then to recall that Androids did not prevail in the market until the mid-2000s. It often feels like Androids have been a mainstay in our lives for decades.
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