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Sweet Beginnings - Android Retrospective: Part 1

The first 3 official versions.
A few days ago, I teased a Android Retrospective. I was getting tired of waiting and decided to make it right now. Happy early Thanksgiving, and The Weekly Marshmallow presents: Part One of the Android Retrospective. In this part, we will look at the founding of Android, some early years, and the first 3 versions. So let's look at Android's first few sweets.

Early Years

Founding

Android Incorporated was founded in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White. Rubin described the Android product as having "Tremendous potential" At this time, it wasn't owned by Google. The company's early products were to develop a advanced operating system for cameras. This was the pitch to investors in April 2004. Soon after that, the company decided that the market for cameras was too small for it's goals, and 5 months later they changed it's efforts to making a handset operating system to rival Symbian and Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

Acquirement by Google

In July 2005, Google bought Android for at least $50 Million. The employees working for Android Not much people know what Android was working on at this time other than working on a system for phones.

In 2006, Google showed a prototype phone looking like a Blackberry. It had no touchscreen, and a physical QWERTY keyboard. But then the iPhone came out in 2007, and then Android and Google had to go back to the drawing board. Google then went out and said their new phone would include a touchscreen.

1.0 - 1.1 Alpha/Beta

Android Alpha, 1.0, was publicly released on September 23, 2008. The first device to have this version was the HTC Dream. It was pretty basic, since it was the first version, you know. Some features include:
  • Before the Google Play Store, there was the Android Market, which was essentially the same thing.
  • A web browser, but not Google Chrome
  • Camera Support, but not the ability to change the quality
  • Google Contacts,  Calendar, Maps, Sync, Search, and Google Talk
  • Text messaging
  • Media Player
  • Voice Dialer
  • The ability to change wallpapers
  • Youtube
  • Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support
Other features include: A Calculator, Alarm Clock, Dialer, Pictures and Settings. Android version 1.1 Beta was released a year later on February 9, 2009, This version was also known internally as "Petit Four" and only fixed up some features from Alpha.

1.5 Cupcake

On April 27th, 2009, Android version 1.5 Cupcake, was released, the first version with a logo and the version named after a dessert, which every version will soon follow. Some new features include:
  • Support for 3rd party keyboards.
  • Support for Widgets
  • Copy and Paste features in the browser
  • User pictures in contacts
  • Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
  • Animated screen transitions
  • Auto-Rotation options
  • Video Recording
  • New stock boot animation
  • Ability to upload videos to Youtube
  • Ability to upload photos to Picasa
Of course, a lot of new stuff was introduced in this update. The official website for this version is here.

1.6 Donut

Not too soon after Cupcake was initially released, Android came out with version 1.6, Donut. Donut built on Cupcake and added new features. These include:
  • A Text-To-Speech engine
  • A battery usage-indicator
  • Quick Search Box
  • Ability for developers to see their results in the search engine 
  • Ability to see app screenshots in the Android Market
  • Gallery, camera and camcorder more fully integrated, with faster camera access
  • Ability to chose multiple photos for deletion in the Gallery
Website: Here

2.0, 2.0.1 and 2.1 Eclair

Not too soon that SAME YEAR (Really? 3 versions the same year?) Android released Version 2.0, codenamed Eclair. Like Donut, it just built off the past 2 versions. It did add something important though, and that was live wallpapers, wallpapers that respond to your touch. It was also the first version to be re-released with more features. Some features from 2.0 include:
  • Expanded background sync
  • Microsoft Exchange email support
  • Bluetooth 2.1 support
  • Ability to tap a contact's picture to call, text or email the person
  • Ability to search through all SMS and MMS messages, with also the ability to delete messages
  • More Camera features, like flash support, digital zoom, scene mode, white balance, color effect and macro focus
  • Improved typing speed in the digital keyboard
  • Refreshed Browser UI bookmark thumbnails
  • Optimized hardware speed
  • Support for more screen sizes
  • Improved Google Maps
  • And of course, LIVE WALLPAPERS.
There were two more versions of Eclair, 2.0.1, and 2.1. Both of these just fixed and tweaked some bugs.

So that's the end of our first part of the Android Retrospective. Sorry it was short, since these were older versions, nothings really known about these. Anyways, see you next week, and have a good day.
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