Android - An Illustrated History

Written by Lucy Black

Monday, 22 April 2013

Since its debut in 2008, Android has released 39 version updates with feature additions, improvements and fixes. The major milestones have been recorded in this visual timeline.

Android is older than the I Programmer website so we didn't cover its origins. Android In was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Milner, Nick Sears and Chris White with the aim, according to Rubin of developing:

"smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences"

It was so far ahead of its time that the project ran out of money and in 2005 Google acquired Android Inc and its key employees.

The familiar "Bugdroid" mascot made its debut when the first beta of the Android SDK was released in November 2007 by the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium led by Google with 34 members including mobile handset makers, application developers, some mobile carriers and chip makers.

This infographic picks up the story when the first commercial version appeared in 2008 and takes us up to the present.

Since Android 1.5 major releases have had confectionery based names - Cupcake, Donut and so on - in alphabetical order. Even Froyo, short for frozen yogurt, is a dessert. Currently Jelly Bean is the latest release and the next in the sequence is expected to be Key Lime Pie which may make its debut at Google I/O 2013 in May.

Android is already the world's dominant operating system and is expected to be on 50% of computing/mobile devices within 5 years. So it seems that it could even surpass Andy Rubin's vision for a smarter mobile device.

Click for full resolution version

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Source: Kinvey

Kinvey is a cross-platform Backend as a Service that provides serverside facilities for developers with a payment model that means you only start to pay a monthly fee when your app has over 100 active users.

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