New features such as virtual buttons, the blue highlights, and a refined interface lead the way, along with others such as facial recognition, new calendar and mail apps, and data usage analysis. Google’s latest Android 4.0 software, Ice Cream Sandwich, was launched on the brand new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, incorporating many of the great features that Honeycomb had provided for the tablet market. While the Nexus S proved to be great for Google and Samsung’s partnership, there were still greater things up their collective sleeve. In their place, software would be doing all of the work with virtual buttons. The biggest change of all, perhaps, was the removal of the need for any physical buttons. Additionally, users could now select the widgets they wanted with previews as to how they would look. Gone was the operating system’s classic green accents, replaced instead with hues of blue. In hindsight, Honeycomb was something of an indicator toward what was to come. Since the smartphone market was in full swing, it was now time to focus on the tablet. The keyboard was also improved, adding multitouch support and support for front-facing cameras. This once again introduced big changes and refinements, bringing a whole new redesign of the home screen and widgets. 2010 – Android 2.3 GingerbreadĪs the Nexus program was growing, it was the latest product, the Nexus S, that was chosen to debut 2.3, this time known as Gingerbread. Much like with the previous iteration, Froyo’s aim was to ultimately further refine the Android experience, introducing two further home screen panels on top of the previously available 3, and offering a fresh new redesign to the Gallery app.įroyo also offered many great improvements under-the-hood, such as a PIN lock screen as an optional alternative to the previously exclusively offered pattern lock screen and mobile hot spot support. The first of the Nexus phones, the Nexus One was the first to receive the Android 2.2 Froyo update. When Froyo was introduced in 2010 it showed the world just why the Nexus phone was a force to be reckoned with. This release saw the introduction of navigation from Google Maps, featuring voice guidance and turn-by-turn navigation, which, to be available for free in 2009, was a pretty big deal.Įclair also brought a pretty big revamp to Android’s internet browser, adding HTML5 support and allowing it to play videos, putting it right up on par with Apple’s iPhone. READ How Artificial Intelligence Will Revolutionize the Entrepreneurial Landscape 2009 – Android 2.0 EclairĪround one year following Android 1.0’s initial launch in 2008, the first major update was released with Android’s Eclair, bringing with it some fairly huge changes which can still be seen to this day. The main gist of Donut was to make the whole Android experience more user-friendly and open up its availability to millions more users by offering support for networks such as Sprint and Verizon in the U.S., along with many large Asian networks.ĭonut also introduced the quick search box, a staple of today’s Android devices, along with now supporting different screen sizes, handing more opportunities to manufacturers. The Android 1.6 Donut update was much more significant than its name would imply. Widgets were also overhauled with the widgets SDK now open to third-party developers, and video capture was now introduced to supplement the previously photo only capture mode of before. Not only this, though, the Cupcake update was the first to offer an on-screen keyboard rather than a physical one as had been the case with Android 1.0. With the following year’s 1.5 update came the introduction of the infamous naming scheme. One feature that Apple couldn’t boast, however, was Android’s onscreen widgets, although it wasn’t until a later date that developers would be able to create their own. While things were incredibly basic by today’s standards, Android 1.0 still offered early versions of Google apps such as Calendar, Gmail, Maps and YouTube, all fully integrated into the operating system.Īndroid also brought along an early version of the Google Play Store, then known as Market, only mere months after the launch of Apple’s App Store on the iPhone. Officially debuting in 2008, Android 1.0 burst onto the scene looking to take Apple’s crown. ![]() Join us for a look into the past as we go through, step by step, each and every one of Android’s delicious-sounding operating systems from 2008 to the present day, as we detail each and every major and minor change each update introduced as the world of the smartphone slowly started to take over our lives. It may seem quaint looking back to the smartphone landscape of 2008 when the first Android operating system was introduced, and we’ve certainly come a long, long way since then. ![]() The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 revolutionized the way we not only use our phones, but our whole lives.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |