Arstechnica Com Gadgets 2014 06 Building Android A 40000 Wor

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The history of Android
Follow the endless iterations from Android 0.5 to Android 4.4.
GEAR & GADGETS / PRODUCT NEWS & REVIEWS
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by Ron Amadeo - June 15 2014, 9:00pm EDT
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Android has been with us in one form or another for more than six years. During that time, we've seen an
absolutely breathtaking rate of change unlike any other development cycle that has ever existed. When it came
time for Google to dive in to the smartphone wars, the company took its rapid-iteration, Web-style update cycle
and applied it to an operating system, and the result has been an onslaught of continual improvement. Lately,
Android has even been running on a previously unheard of six-month development cycle, and that's slower
than it used to be. For the first year of Androids commercial existence, Google was putting out a new version
every two-and-a-half months.
Enlarge / Android's home screen over the years.
Ron Amadeo
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The rest of the industry, by comparison, moves at a snail's pace. Microsoft updates its desktop OS every three
to five years, and Apple is on a yearly update cycle for OS X and iOS. Not every update is created equal,
either. iOS has one major design revision in seven years, and the newest version of Windows Phone 8 looks
very similar to Windows Phone 7. On Android, however, users are lucky if anything looks the same this year as
it did last year. The Play Store, for instance, has had five major redesigns in five years. For Android, that's
normal.
Looking back, Android's existence has been a blur. It's now a historically big
operating system. Almost a billion total devices have been sold, and 1.5 million
devices are activated per daybut how did Google get here? With this level of
scale and success, you would think there would be tons of coverage of Androids
rise from zero to hero. However, there just isnt. Android wasnt very popular in the
early days, and until Android 4.0, screenshots could only be taken with the
developer kit. These two factors mean you arent going to find a lot of images or
information out there about the early versions of Android.
The problem now with the lack of early coverage is that early versions of Android
are dying. While something like Windows 1.0 will be around foreverjust grab an
old computer and install itAndroid could be considered the first cloud-based
operating system. Many features are heavily reliant on Googles servers to
function. With fewer and fewer people using old versions of Android, those servers
are being shut down. And when a cloud-reliant app has its server support shut off,
it will never work againthe app crashes and displays a blank screen, or it just
refuses to start.
Thanks to this cloud rot," an Android retrospective wont be possible in a few years. Early
versions of Android will be empty, broken husks that won't function without cloud support.
While its easy to think of this as a ways off, it's happening right now. While writing this
piece, we ran into tons of apps that no longer function because the server support has
been turned off. Early clients for Google Maps and the Android Market, for instance, are no
Google's original introduction of Android, from way back in November 2007.
WHY DOCUMENTING EVERY
ANDROID VERSION HAS BECOME A
LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE
7 phones, 700 screenshots: Behind
the scenes of our Android history
project.
AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE
ANDROID INTERFACE
From 2007 to today, in living color.
FURTHER READING
longer able to communicate with Google. They either throw an error message and crash or
display blank screens. Some apps even worked one week and died the next, because
Google was actively shutting down servers during our writing!
To prevent any more of Android's past from being lost to the annals of history, we did what
needed to be done. This is 20+ versions of Android, seven devices, and lots and lots of
screenshots cobbled together in one space. This is The History of Android, from the very
first public builds to the newest version of KitKat.
Read it your way
In addition to seeing no ads, Ars Technica premier subscribers can download a (free)
PDF version of any article or view any article as a single page.
> View Android History as a single page
> Download the Android History PDF
Table of Contents
Android 0.5 Milestone 3the first public build
Android 0.5 Milestone 5the land of scrapped interfaces
Android 0.9 Betahey, this looks familiar!
Android 1.0introducing Google Apps and actual hardware
Android 1.1the first truly incremental update
Android 1.5 Cupcakea virtual keyboard opens up device design
Google Maps is the first built-in app to hit the Android Market
Android 1.6 DonutCDMA support brings Android to any carrier
Android 2.0 clair blowing up the GPS industry
The Nexus Oneenter the Google Phone
Android 2.1the discovery (and abuse) of animations
Android 2.1, update 1the beginning of an endless war
Android 2.2 Froyofaster and Flash-ier
Voice Actionsa supercomputer in your pocket
Android 2.3 Gingerbreadthe first major UI overhaul
Android 3.0 Honeycombtablets and a design renaissance
Google Music Betacloud storage in lieu of a content store
Google Music Betacloud storage in lieu of a content store
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwichthe modern era
Google Play and the return of direct-to-consumer device sales
Android 4.1 Jelly BeanGoogle Now points toward the future
Google Play Servicesfragmentation and making OS versions (nearly) obsolete
Android 4.2 Jelly Beannew Nexus devices, new tablet interface
Out-of-cycle updateswho needs a new OS?
Android 4.3 Jelly Beangetting wearable support out early
Android 4.4 KitKatmore polish; less memory usage
Today - Android everywhere
Android 0.5, Milestone 3the first public build
Before we go diving into Android on real hardware, we're going to start with the early, early days of Android.
While 1.0 was the first version to ship on hardware, there were several beta versions only released in emulator
form with the SDK. The emulators were meant for development purposes only, so they dont include any of the
Google Apps, or even many core OS apps. Still, theyre our best look into the pre-release days of Android.
Enlarge / The emulators default qwerty-bar layout running the Milestone 3 build.
Ron Amadeo
Before whimsical candy code names and cross-promotional deals with multinational food corporations, the first
public release of Android was labeled "m3-rc20a""m3" standing for "Milestone 3." While Google may not have
publicized the version numberand this build didn't even have a settings app to checkthe browser user
agent identifies this as "Android 0.5."
In November 2007, two years after Google acquired Android and five months after the launch of the iPhone,
Android was announced, and the first emulator was released. Back then, the OS was still getting its feet under
it. It was easily dismissed as "just a BlackBerry clone." The emulator used a qwerty-bar skin with a 320x240
display, replicating an actual prototype device. The device was built by HTC, and it seems to be the device that
was codenamed "Sooner" according to many early Android accounts. But the Sooner was never released to
market.
According to accounts of the early development days of Android, when Apple finally showed off its revolutionary
smartphone in January 2007, Google had to "start over" with Androidincluding scrapping the Sooner.
Considering the Milestone 3 emulator came out almost a year after Apple's iPhone unveiling, it's surprising to
see the device interface still closely mimicked the Blackberry model instead. While work had no doubt been
done on the underlying system during that year of post-iPhone development, the emulator still launched with
what was perceived as an "old school" interface. It didn't make a good first impression.
At this early stage, it seems like the Android button layout had not been finalized yet. While the first commercial
Android devices would use Home," Back," Menu," and Search" as the standard set of buttons, the emulator
had a blank space marked as an "X" where you would expect the search button to be. The Sooner" hardware
prototype was even strangerit had a star symbol as the fourth button.
Enlarge / From left to right: the home screen, an open notification, and the apps" folder.
Ron Amadeo
There was no configurable home screen or widgets, just a simple dock of icons at the bottom that could be
cycled through or tapped on. While touch screen support worked for some features, Milestone 3 was primarily
controlled with a five-way d-padan anachronism that Android still supports to this day. Even this early version
of Android could do animations. Icons would grow and shrink as they entered and exited the docks center
window.
There was no notification panel yet, either. Notification icons showed up in the status bar (shown above as a
smiley face), and the only way to open them was to press "up" on the d-pad while on the home screen. You
couldn't tap on the icon to open it, nor could you access notifications from any screen other than home. When
a notification was opened, the status bar expanded slightly, and the text of the notification appeared in a
speech bubble. Once you had a notification, there was no manual way to clear itapps were responsible for
clearing their own notifications.
App drawer duties were handled by a simple "Applications" folder on the left of the dock. Despite having a
significant amount of functions, the Milestone 3 emulator was not very forthcoming with app icons. "Browser,"
"Contacts," and "Maps" were the only real apps here. Oddly, "recent calls" was elevated to a standalone icon.
Because this was just an emulator, icons for core smartphone functionality were missing, like alarm, calendar,
dialer, calculator, camera, gallery, and settings. Hardware prototypes demoed to the press had many of these,
and there was a suite of Google Apps up and running by this point. Sadly, theres no way for us to look at them.
Theyre so old they can't connect to Googles servers now anyway.
Enlarge / Milestone 3's menu system in the browser, the wallpaper interface, and the volume control.
Ron Amadeo
The now-deprecated menu system was up and running in Milestone 3. Hitting the hardware menu button
brought up a gray list with a blue gradient highlight, complete with hardware keyboard shortcuts. In the
screenshot above, you can see the menu open in the browser. Going to a second level, like the zoom menu,
turned the first level of the menu oddly transparent.
Surprisingly, multitasking and background applications already worked in Milestone 3. Leaving an app didn't
close itapps would save state, even down to text left in a text box. This was a feature iOS wouldnt get around
to matching until the release of iOS 4 in 2010, and it really showed the difference between the two platforms.
iOS was originally meant to be a closed platform with no third-party apps, so the platform robustness wasnt a
huge focus. Android was built from the ground up to be a powerful app platform, and ease of app development
was one of the driving forces behind its creation.
Before Android, Google was already making moves into mobile with WAP sites and J2ME flip phone apps, which
made it acutely aware of how difficult mobile development was. According to The Atlantic, Larry Page once said
of the companys mobile efforts We had a closet full of over 100 phones, and we were building our software
pretty much one device at a time. Developers often complain about Android fragmentation now, but the
problem was much, much worse before the OS came along.
Googles platform strategy eventually won out, and iOS ended up slowly adding many of these app-centric
featuresmultitasking, cross-app sharing, and an app switcherlater on.
Enlarge / The dialer screen that pops up when you press numbers on the home screen, an incoming call, and the
call conferencing interface.
Ron Amadeo
Despite not having a dialer icon, Milestone 3 emulator was equipped with a way to make phone calls. Pressing
anything on the keyboard would bring up the screen on the left, which was a hybrid dialer/contact search.
Entering only numbers and hitting the green phone hardware button would start a phone call, and letters would
search contacts. Contacts were not searchable by number, however. Even a direct hit on a phone number
would not bring up a contact.
Incoming calls were displayed as an almost-full-screen popup with a sweet transparent background. Once
inside a call, the background became dark gray, and Milestone 3 presented the user with a surprisingly
advanced feature set: mute, speakerphone, hold, and call conferencing buttons. Multiple calls were presented
as overlapping, semi-transparent cards, and users had options to swap or merge calls. Swapping calls
triggered a nice little card shuffle animation.
Enlarge / The contacts list, an individual contact, editing a contact, and the recent calls screen.
Ron Amadeo
Contacts was a stark, black and blue list of names. Contact cards had a spot for a contact picture but couldn't
assign one to the space (at least in the emulator). The only frill in this area was XMPP presence dots to the left
of each name in Contacts. An always-on XMPP connection has traditionally been at the heart of Android, and
that deep integration already started in Milestone 3. Android used XMPP to power a 24/7 connection to
Googles servers, powering Google Talk, cloud-to-device push messaging, and app install and uninstall
messages.
Enlarge / The browsers fake Google homepage, the address bar, and the history interface.
Ron Amadeo
The browser ran Webkit 419.3, which put it in the same era as Mac OS X 10.4's Safari 2. The homepage was
not Google.com, but a hard-coded home.html file included with Android. It looked like Google.com from a
thousand years ago. The browser's OS X heritage was still visible, rendering browser buttons with a glossy,
Aqua-style search button.
The tiny BlackBerry-style screen necessitated a separate address bar, which was brought up by a "go to"
option in the browser's menu. While autocomplete didn't work, the address bar live searched your history as
you typed. The picture on the right was the History display, which used thumbnails to display each site. The
current thumbnail was in front of the other two, and scrolling through them triggered a swooping animation. But
at this early stage, the browser didnt support multiple tabs or windowsyou had the current website, and that
was it.
Enlarge / A video-screengrab-derived Google Maps Photoshop, the directions interface, and the gallery test view.
Ron Amadeo
From the beginning, Google knew maps would be important on mobile, even shipping a Maps client on the
Milestone 5 emulator. That version of Google Maps was the first thing we came across that died from cloud rot.
The client can't load information from Googles servers, so the map displayed as a blank, gray grid. Nothing
works.
Luckily, for the first screenshot above, we were able to piece together an accurate representation from the
Android launch video. Old Google Maps seemed fully prepared for a non-touch device, listing hardware key
shortcuts along the bottom of the screen. Its unclear if places worked, or if Maps only ran on addresses at this
point.
Hidden behind the menu were options for search, directions, and satellite and traffic layers. The middle
screenshot is of the directions UI, where you could even pick a contact address as a start or end address.
Maps lacked any kind of GPS integration, however; you can't find a "my location" button anywhere.
While there was no proper gallery, on the right is a test view for a gallery, which was hidden in the "API Demos"
app. The pictures scrolled left and right, but there was no way to open photos to a full screen view. There
were no photo management options either. It was essentially a test of a scrolling picture view.
Enlarge / The time picker and calendar, with ridiculous kerning issues, and the vertical list test, featuring Ars.
Ron Amadeo
There was also no settings app, but we can look at the original time and date pickers, thanks to the API Demos.
This demonstrates how raw a lot of Android was: kerning issues all over the place, a huge gap in between the
minute digits, and unevenly spaced days of the week on the calendar. While the time picker let you change
each digit independently, there was no way to change months or years other than moving the day block out of
the current month and on to the next or previous month.
Keep in mind that while this may seem like dinosaur remnants from some forgotten era, this was only released
six years ago. We tend to get used to the pace of technology. It's easy to look back on stuff like this and think
that it was from 20 years ago. Compare this late-2007 timeframe to desktop OSes, and Microsoft was trying to
sell Windows Vista to the world for almost a year, and Apple just released OS X 10.5 Leopard.
One last Milestone 3 detail: Google gave Ars Technica a shoutout in the Milestone 3 emulator. Opening the
API Demos" app and going to "Views," "Focus," then "Vertical" revealed a test list headlined by this very
Website.
- - -
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Enlarge / The new emulator skin that comes with Milestone 3, RC37a, which uses a more modern, all-
touchscreen style.
Ron Amadeo
Two months later, in December 2007, Google released an update for the Milestone 3 emulator that came with a
much roomier 480320 device configuration. This was tagged "m3-rc37a." The software was still identical to the
BlackBerry build, just with much more screen real estate available.
PAGE: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 25 26 NEXT
Ron Amadeo / Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products.
He is always on the hunt f or a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work.
@RonAmadeo on Twitter
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