Sometimes, it feels like we’ve been running Google’s mobile OS on our Android devices forever. However, it’s been 15 years since the first official Android phone hit store shelves. The key decision in Android history was Google’s commitment to make Android an open-source operating system. That allowed it to become highly popular with third-party phone makers. Just a few years after the launch of Android 1.0, smartphones powered by the new OS were everywhere.
Fast-forward to now, and we are on Android 14. The OS has become the most popular mobile operating system globally. It has defeated its many competitors like Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS, webOS, and Windows Phone (most of which have died along the way). Apple’s iOS is the only platform still standing as a serious competitor to Android. That situation doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon.
Let’s take a look at the Android history so far.
The founding of Android
Android history began in October 2003. This was well before the term smartphone became ubiquitous. It was also several years before Apple announced the first iPhone and iOS. Android Inc was founded in Palo Alto, California. Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Chris White, and Andy Rubin were its four founders. At the time, Rubin mentioned Android Inc would develop “smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences.”
Rubin revealed in a 2013 speech in Tokyo that Android OS was originally meant to improve the operating systems of digital cameras. Even back then, the market for stand-alone digital cameras was declining. A few months later, Android Inc shifted gears towards using the OS inside mobile phones.
Google bought Android in 2005 and everything changed.In 2005, the next significant chapter in Android history began when Google acquired the original company. Rubin and other founding members continued developing the OS under their new owners. They then decided to use Linux as the basis for the Android OS. That made it possible to offer the operating system to third-party mobile manufacturers for free. Google and the Android team felt the company could profit from providing other services, including apps.
Rubin stayed at Google as head of the Android team until 2013. This was when the Mountain View company announced Andy would be leaving the division. In late 2014, Rubin left Google altogether and launched a startup business incubator before eventually returning to the smartphone business with the ill-fated Essential in 2017.
The Android logo
Irina Blok created the now-familiar logo for the Android OS while working for Google. It looks like a combination of a robot and a green bug. Blok has said the only directive the Google design team gave her was to make the logo look like a robot. Blok also stated that one of her inspirations for the final design for the Android mascot was the familiar restroom logos representing “Men” and “Women.”
One thing that Blok and Google decided was to make the Android robot itself an open-source project. Nearly every other huge company would protect such a logo or mascot from redesigns. However, tons of people have modified Android’s logo, because Google allows such changes under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.
The Android mascot — also known as just “Andy” — was overhauled alongside much of Android’s branding in 2019. Andy may have lost his body, but the new look is now more ubiquitous across Android’s branding.
Android 1.0: The beginning of Android history
The T-Mobile G1/HTC DreamIn 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone and ushered in a new era in mobile computing. At the time, Google was still working on Android in secret, but in November of that year, the company slowly started to reveal its plans to compete with Apple and other mobile platforms. In a major development, Google led the formation of the Open Handset Alliance. It included phone makers like HTC and Motorola, chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, and carriers including T-Mobile.
Then Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted for saying, “Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’ that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different phone models.” The public beta of Android version 1.0 launched for developers on November 5, 2007.
In September 2008, the very first Android smartphone was announced: the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream in other parts of the world. It went on sale in the US in October of that year. With its slide-out 3.2-inch touchscreen combined with a QWERTY physical keyboard, the phone wasn’t precisely a design marvel. Indeed, the T-Mobile G1 got pretty bad reviews from technology media outlets. The device didn’t even have a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, which, unlike today, was pretty much a de facto phone feature among Android’s competition.
However, the Android 1.0 OS inside already had the trademarks of Google’s plan for the OS. It integrated a number of the company’s other products and services. This includes Google Maps, YouTube, and an HTML browser (pre-Chrome) that used Google’s search services. It also had the first version of Android Market. Google proudly stated the app store would have “dozens of unique, first-of-a-kind Android applications.” These features sound pretty primitive now, but this was just the beginning of Android’s rise in the mobile device market.
Android history: All the major OS versions so farAndroid 1.5 Cupcake
The first official public codename for Android didn’t appear until the release of version 1.5 Cupcake in April 2009. The credit for naming Android versions after desserts has traditionally gone to project manager Ryan Gibson. However, his specific reasons for using such a naming convention remain unknown.
Cupcake added several new features and improvements compared to the first two public versions. This includes things we now take for granted, such as the ability to upload videos to YouTube, a way for phones’ displays to rotate automatically, and support for third-party keyboards.
Some of the phones released with Cupcake installed out of the box included the first Samsung Galaxy phone and the HTC Hero.
Android 1.6 Donut
Google quickly launched Android 1.6 Donut in September 2009. The new OS now offered support for carriers using CDMA-based networks. This allowed Android phones to be sold by all carriers around the world.
Other features included the introduction of the Quick Search Box, and quick toggling between the Camera, Camcorder, and Gallery to streamline the media-capture experience. Donut also introduced the Power Control widget for managing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc.
One of the phones sold with Donut installed was the ill-fated Dell Streak. It had a giant (at the time) 5-inch screen, and was described on our own site as a “smartphone/tablet.” These days, a 5-inch display is considered relatively small for a smartphone.
Android 2.0-2.1 Eclair
In October 2009 — about a year after the launch of Android 1.0 — Google released version 2.0 of the OS, with the official codename Eclair. This version was the first to add text-to-speech support, and also introduced live wallpapers, multiple account support, and Google Maps navigation, among many other new features and improvements.
The Motorola Droid was the first phone that sported Android 2.0 out of the box. The Droid was also the first Android-based phone sold by Verizon Wireless. In a funny bit of trivia, while Google was safe to use Android as the name for its OS, the term “Droid” was trademarked by Lucasfilm, in reference to the robots of the Star Wars franchise. Motorola had to get permission and pay some money to Lucasfilm to use the name for its phone. Motorola continued using the Droid brand for many of its phones as late as 2016.
Android 2.2 Froyo
Android 2.2 Froyo (short for “frozen yogurt”) was officially launched in May 2010. Smartphones sporting Froyo could take advantage of several new features, including Wi-Fi mobile hotspot functions, push notifications via the Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) service, flash support, and more.
The first smartphone in Android history to carry Google’s Nexus branding — the Nexus One — launched with Android 2.1 out of the box earlier in 2010, but quickly received an over-the-air update to Froyo later that year. This marked a new approach for Google, with the company working closer than ever before with hardware manufacturer HTC to showcase pure Android.
Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Android 2.3 Gingerbread was launched in September 2010. The OS received a user interface refresh under Gingerbread. It added support for using near field communication (NFC) functions for smartphones with the required hardware. The first phone to sport both Gingerbread and NFC hardware was the Nexus S, co-developed by Google and Samsung. Gingerbread also laid the groundwork for the selfie by adding support for multiple cameras and video chat support within Google Talk.
Android 3.0 Honeycomb
This version of the OS is perhaps the oddball of the bunch. Honeycomb was created for tablets and other mobile devices with larger displays. It was first introduced in February 2011, along with the Motorola Xoom tablet. It included features like a redesigned UI for large screens and a notification bar on the bottom of a tablet’s display.
The idea was that Honeycomb would offer features that could not be handled by the smaller displays found on smartphones at the time. It was also a response by Google and its third-party partners to the 2010 release of Apple’s iPad.
Even though Honeycomb was available, some tablets were still released with the smartphone-based Android 2.x versions. In the end, Honeycomb ended up being a version of Android that did not see wide adoption. Google decided to integrate most of its features in its next major 4.0 version, Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s a bit of an outlier in Android history.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Released in October 2011, Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich version brought several new features. It combined many of the options of the tablet-only Honeycomb version with the smartphone-oriented Gingerbread. It also included a “favorites tray” on the home screen, along with the first support for unlocking a phone by using its camera to take a picture of its owner’s face. That kind of biometric sign-in support has evolved and improved considerably since.
Other notable changes with ICS included support for all on-screen buttons, swipe gestures to dismiss notifications and browser tabs, and the ability to monitor your data usage over mobile and Wi-Fi.
Android 4.1-4.3 Jelly BeanThe Jelly Bean era in Android history began in June 2012 with the release of Android 4.1. Google quickly released versions 4.2 and 4.3 under the Jelly Bean label in October 2012 and July 2013, respectively.
Some of the new additions in these software updates included new notification features that displayed more content or action buttons, along with full support for the Android version of Google’s Chrome web browser, which was included in Android 4.2. Google Now also made an appearance as part of Search, while “Project Butter” was introduced to speed up animations and improve Android’s touch responsiveness. External Displays and Miracast also gained support, as did HDR photography.
Android 4.4 KitKat
Android 4.4 is the first OS version that used a previously trademarked name for a piece of candy. Before officially launching in September 2013, the company released hints at its Google I/O conference that year that the codename for Android 4.4 would be “Key Lime Pie.” Indeed, most of Google’s Android team thought that would be the case as well.
As it turned out, Google’s director of Android global partnerships, John Lagerling, thought that “Key Lime Pie” would not be a familiar enough name to use worldwide. Instead, he decided to do something different. He contacted Nestle, the creators of the KitKat bar, and asked them if they could use the name for Android 4.4. Nestle agreed, and KitKat became the name of the next Android version. It was an experiment in marketing that Google didn’t rekindle until the launch of Oreo (we’ll get to that).
KitKat didn’t have many new features, but it did have one thing that helped expand the overall Android market. It optimized Android to run on smartphones with as little as 512 MB of RAM. This allowed phone makers to use the latest version of Android on much cheaper handsets. Google’s Nexus 5 smartphone was the first with Android 4.4 pre-installed.
Android 5.0 Lollipop
First launched in the fall of 2014, Android 5.0 Lollipop was a major shakeup in the overall look of the operating system. It was the first version of the OS that used Google’s new Material Design language. It made liberal use of lighting and shadow effects, among other things, to simulate a paper-like look for the Android user interface. The UI also got some other upgrades, including a revamped navigation bar, rich notifications for the lock screen, and much more.
The subsequent Android 5.1 update made a few more under-the-hood changes. This included official support for dual-SIM, HD Voice calls, and Device Protection to keep thieves locked out of your phone even after a factory reset.
Google’s Nexus 6 smartphone and Nexus 9 tablet were the first devices to have Lollipop pre-installed.
