Theme: “Android Versions: A Living
History”
This
day commemorates the 15th anniversary since the CUBIES Game was approved as a Thesis Proposal during CBG 2006 or officially known as Games of the VIIth
Colympiad. This year’s theme focuses the different versions of Android and the
uniquely added features in each of these versions.
What
a long, strange trip it's been.
From
its inaugural release to today, Android has transformed visually, conceptually
and functionally — time and time again. Google's mobile operating system may
have started out scrappy, but holy moly, has it ever evolved.
Here's
a fast-paced tour of Android version highlights from the platform's birth to
present.
I.
Android versions 1.0 to 1.1: The early days
Android
made its official public debut in 2008 with Android 1.0 — a release so ancient
it didn't even have a cute codename.
Things
were pretty basic back then, but the software did include a suite of early
Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Calendar and YouTube, all of which were
integrated into the operating system — a stark contrast to the more easily
updatable standalone-app model employed today.
II.
Android version 1.5: Cupcake
With
early 2009's Android 1.5 Cupcake release, the tradition of Android version
names was born. Cupcake introduced numerous refinements to the Android
interface, including the first on-screen keyboard — something that'd be
necessary as phones moved away from the once-ubiquitous physical keyboard
model.
Cupcake
also brought about the framework for third-party app widgets, which would
quickly turn into one of Android's most distinguishing elements, and it
provided the platform's first-ever option for video recording.
III.
Android version 1.6: Donut
Android
1.6, Donut, rolled into the world in the fall of 2009. Donut filled in some
important holes in Android's center, including the ability for the OS to operate
on a variety of different screen sizes and resolutions — a factor that'd be
critical in the years to come. It also added support for CDMA networks like
Verizon, which would play a key role in Android's imminent explosion.
IV.
Android versions 2.0 to 2.1: Eclair
Keeping
up the breakneck release pace of Android's early years, Android 2.0 Eclair,
emerged just six weeks after Donut; its "point-one" update, also
called Eclair, came out a couple months later. Eclair was the first Android
release to enter mainstream consciousness thanks to the original Motorola Droid
phone and the massive Verizon-led marketing campaign surrounding it.
The
release's most transformative element was the addition of voice-guided
turn-by-turn navigation and real-time traffic info — something previously
unheard of (and still essentially unmatched) in the smartphone world.
Navigation aside, Eclair brought live wallpapers to Android as well as the
platform's first speech-to-text function. And it made waves for injecting the
once-iOS-exclusive pinch-to-zoom capability into Android — a move often seen as
the spark that ignited Apple's long-lasting "thermonuclear war" against
Google.
V.
Android version 2.2: Froyo
Just
four months after Android 2.1 arrived, Google served up Android 2.2, Froyo,
which revolved largely around under-the-hood performance improvements.
Froyo
did deliver some important front-facing features, though, including the
addition of the now-standard dock at the bottom of the home screen as well as
the first incarnation of Voice Actions, which allowed you to perform basic
functions like getting directions and making notes by tapping an icon and then
speaking a command.
Notably,
Froyo also brought support for Flash to Android's web browser — an option that
was significant both because of the widespread use of Flash at the time and
because of Apple's adamant stance against supporting it on its own
mobile devices. Apple would eventually win, of course, and Flash would become
far less common. But back when it was still everywhere, being able to access
the full web without any black holes was a genuine advantage only
Android could offer.
VI.
Android version 2.3: Gingerbread
Android's
first true visual identity started coming into focus with 2010's
Gingerbread release. Bright green had long been the color of Android's robot
mascot, and with Gingerbread, it became an integral part of the operating
system's appearance. Black and green seeped all over the UI as Android started
its slow march toward distinctive design.
VII.
Android 3.0 to 3.2: Honeycomb
2011's Honeycomb period
was a weird time for Android. Android 3.0 came into the world as a tablet-only
release to accompany the launch of the Motorola Xoom, and through the
subsequent 3.1 and 3.2 updates, it remained a tablet-exclusive (and closed-source)
entity.
Under
the guidance of newly arrived design chief Matias Duarte, Honeycomb
introduced a dramatically reimagined UI for Android. It had a space-like
"holographic" design that traded the platform's trademark green for
blue and placed an emphasis on making the most of a tablet's screen space.
While
the concept of a tablet-specific interface didn't last long, many of
Honeycomb's ideas laid the groundwork for the Android we know today. The
software was the first to use on-screen buttons for Android's main navigational
commands; it marked the beginning of the end for the permanent
overflow-menu button; and it introduced the concept of a card-like UI with its
take on the Recent Apps list.
VIII.
Android version 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich
With Honeycomb
acting as the bridge from old to new, Ice Cream Sandwich— also released in
2011 — served as the platform's official entry into the era of modern design.
The release refined the visual concepts introduced with Honeycomb and reunited
tablets and phones with a single, unified UI vision.
ICS
dropped much of Honeycomb's "holographic" appearance but kept its use
of blue as a system-wide highlight. And it carried over core system elements
like on-screen buttons and a card-like appearance for app-switching.
Android
4.0 also made swiping a more integral method of getting around the operating
system, with the then-revolutionary-feeling ability to swipe away things like
notifications and recent apps. And it started the slow process of bringing a
standardized design framework — known as "Holo" — all
throughout the OS and into Android's app ecosystem.
IX.
Android versions 4.1 to 4.3: Jelly Bean
Spread
across three impactful Android versions, 2012 and 2013's Jelly Bean releases
took ICS's fresh foundation and made meaningful strides in fine-tuning and
building upon it. The releases added plenty of poise and polish into the
operating system and went a long way in making Android more inviting for the
average user.
Visuals
aside, Jelly Bean brought about our first taste of Google Now — the
spectacular predictive-intelligence utility that's sadly since devolved
into a glorified news feed. It gave us expandable and interactive
notifications, an expanded voice search system and a more advanced system for
displaying search results in general, with a focus on card-based results that
attempted to answer questions directly.
Multiuser
support also came into play, albeit on tablets only at this point, and an early
version of Android's Quick Settings panel made its first appearance. Jelly Bean
ushered in a heavily hyped system for placing widgets on your lock screen,
too — one that, like so many Android features over the years, quietly
disappeared a couple years later.
X.
Android version 4.4: KitKat
Late-2013's KitKat release
marked the end of Android's dark era, as the blacks of Gingerbread and the
blues of Honeycomb finally made their way out of the operating system. Lighter
backgrounds and more neutral highlights took their places, with a transparent
status bar and white icons giving the OS a more contemporary appearance.
Android
4.4 also saw the first version of "OK, Google" support — but in
KitKat, the hands-free activation prompt worked only when your screen was
already on and you were either at your home screen or inside
the Google app.
The
release was Google's first foray into claiming a full panel of the home screen
for its services, too — at least, for users of its own Nexus phones and those
who chose to download its first-ever standalone launcher.
XI.
Android versions 5.0 and 5.1: Lollipop
Google
essentially reinvented Android — again — with its Android 5.0 Lollipop
release in the fall of 2014. Lollipop launched the
still-present-today Material Design standard, which brought a whole new
look that extended across all of Android, its apps and even other Google
products.
The
card-based concept that had been scattered throughout Android became a core UI
pattern — one that would guide the appearance of everything from notifications,
which now showed up on the lock screen for at-a-glance access, to the Recent
Apps list, which took on an unabashedly card-based appearance.
Lollipop
introduced a slew of new features into Android, including truly hands-free
voice control via the "OK, Google" command, support for multiple
users on phones and a priority mode for better notification management. It
changed so much, unfortunately, that it also introduced a bunch of
troubling bugs, many of which wouldn't be fully ironed out until the following
year's 5.1 release.
XII.
Android version 6.0: Marshmallow
In
the grand scheme of things, 2015's Marshmallow was a fairly minor
Android release — one that seemed more like a 0.1-level update than
anything deserving of a full number bump. But it started the trend of Google
releasing one major Android version per year and that version always receiving
its own whole number.
Marshmallow's
most attention-grabbing element was a screen-search feature called Now On Tap —
something that, as I said at the time, had tons of potential that wasn't
fully tapped. Google never quite perfected the system and ended up quietly
retiring its brand and moving it out of the forefront the following year.
Android
6.0 did introduce some stuff with lasting impact, though, including more
granular app permissions, support for fingerprint readers and support for
USB-C.
XIII.
Android versions 7.0 and 7.1: Nougat
Google's
2016 Android Nougat releases provided Android with a native
split-screen mode, a new bundled-by-app system for organizing notifications and
a Data Saver feature. Nougat added some smaller but still significant
features, too, like an Alt-Tab-like shortcut for snapping between
apps.
Perhaps
most pivotal among Nougat's enhancements, however, was the launch of
the Google Assistant — which came alongside the announcement
of Google's first fully self-made phone, the Pixel, about two months after
Nougat's debut. The Assistant would go on to become a critical component of
Android and most other Google products and is arguably the
company's foremost effort today.
XIV.
Android version 8.0 and 8.1: Oreo
Android
Oreo added a variety of niceties to the platform, including a native
picture-in-picture mode, a notification snoozing option, and
notification channels that offer fine control over how apps can alert you.
The
2017 release also included some noteworthy elements that
furthered Google's goal of aligning Android and Chrome OS and
improving the experience of using Android apps on Chromebooks, and it was
the first Android version to feature Project Treble — an ambitious
effort to create a modular base for Android's code with the hope of making it
easier for device-makers to provide timely software updates.
XV.
Android version 9: Pie
The
freshly baked scent of Android Pie, a.k.a. Android 9, wafted into the
Android ecosystem in August of 2018. Pie's most transformative change was
its hybrid gesture/button navigation system, which traded Android's
traditional Back, Home, and Overview keys for a large, multifunctional Home
button and a small Back button that appeared alongside it as needed.
Pie
included some noteworthy productivity features, too, such as a universal
suggested-reply system for messaging notifications, a new dashboard
of Digital Wellbeing controls, and more intelligent systems for power and
screen brightness management. And, of course, there was no shortage
of smaller but still-significant advancements hidden throughout Pie's
filling, including a smarter way to handle Wi-Fi hotspots, a welcome twist to
Android's Battery Saver mode, and a variety of privacy and security
enhancements.
XVI.
Android version 10
Google
released Android 10 — the first Android version to shed its letter and be known
simply by a number, with no dessert-themed moniker attached — in September of
2019. Most noticeably, the software brings about a totally
reimagined interface for Android gestures, this time doing away with the
tappable Back button altogether and relying on a completely swipe-driven
approach to system navigation. (If you so choose, that is; unlike Pie, Android
10 also includes the traditional Android three-button navigation system as an
option on all phones.)
Under
the hood, Android 10 introduces a new setup for hot-fix-style
updates that'll eventually allow for faster and more consistent rollouts
of small, narrowly focused patches. And the software has plenty of other quietly
important improvements, including an updated permissions system that
gives you more control over exactly how and when apps are able to access
location data as well as an expanded system for protecting unique device
identifiers (which can be used to track a device's activity over time).
Beyond
that, Android 10 includes a system-wide dark theme, a new Focus Mode that lets
you limit distractions from specific apps with the tap of an on-screen button,
and a long-overdue overhaul of Android's sharing menu. It also
introduces a new Live Caption feature that allows you to generate on-the-fly
visual captions for any media playing on your phone — videos, podcasts, or even
just regular ol' voice recordings. The feature debuted initially on Google's
own Pixel phones and has slowly made its way to more devices from there.
XVII.
Android version 11
Android
11, launched at the start of September 2020, is a pretty substantial Android
update both under the hood and on the surface. The version's most significant
changes revolve around privacy: The update builds upon the expanded
permissions system introduced in Android 10 and adds in the ability for users
to grant apps certain permissions — those related to location access, camera
access, and microphone access — only on a limited, single-use basis.
Android
11 also pushes the background location permission even deeper into the system
and makes it more difficult for apps to request (and thus less likely for users
to activate inadvertently). And it introduces a new feature in which apps that
have gone unopened for a matter of months will automatically have their
permissions revoked unless you actively opt to reauthorize them.
Beyond that, Android 11 removes an app's ability to
see what other apps are installed on your phone — something
that was actually possible up until this release — and it limits the ways apps
are able to interact with your local storage in order to better protect your
information.
Importantly but invisibly, Android 11 more than
doubles the number of once-OS-bundled elements that now exist as their own
standalone modules — like apps in the Play Store, basically — and thus can be
updated directly by Google, frequently and universally and without the need for
any carrier or manufacturer involvement. And as for the more visible,
user-facing features, Android 11 refines the system notification area to
emphasize and simplify conversation-related alerts; it introduces a new
streamlined media player that contains controls for all audio- and
video-playing apps in a single space; and it adds in a new contextual menu of
connected-device controls for any smart products associated with your account
(though some of those features require a bit of manual adjustment in
order to work optimally).
Last
but not least, Android 11 marks the long-awaited debut of Bubbles —
a new kind of multitasking system first discussed in 2019 but then put on the
back burner until now. With apps that support the system, Bubbles allows you to
pop conversations out into floating windows that appear on top of whatever else
you're doing and can be condensed down into small, floating bubbles that remain
easily accessible for expansion.
Android
11 has plenty of other small but significant improvements —
including a new Notification History section, a native screen recording
function, and an automated scheduling system for the system-wide Dark Theme.
XVIII.
Android version 12 (Beta Version)
Google
released the first public beta version of Android 12 at its I/O
convention in May, and in a twist from the last several Android versions, the
most significant progressions with the software are mostly on the surface.
Android 12 features the biggest reimagining of
Android's interface since 2014's Android 5.0 (Lollipop) version. That version,
as we discussed a moment ago, was the first to showcase Google's then-new
Material Design standard. And this one is the first to
integrate an updated and completely overhauled take on that standard —
something known as Material You.
Material You brings a dramatically different look and
feel to the entire Android experience, and it isn't limited only to
system-level elements, either. Eventually, Android 12's design principles will
stretch into both apps on your phone and Google services on
the web. The same principles will show up on Chromebooks, Smart Displays, and
Google-associated wearables as well. And since a huge part of the Material You
concept is allowing you (get it?) to customize the palette and
other specifics of the interface's appearance — even having your phone generate
dynamic personalized themes for you on the fly, based on the colors of your
phone's wallpaper at any given moment — the changes run deep and will
absolutely be noticeable.
Notably,
most of Material You's most meaningful design advancements will likely be available
only on Google's own Pixel phones, at least to start. After years of having
third-party device-makers muck around with the Android interface and introduce
all sorts of arbitrary change for the sake of change, Google finally seems to
be embracing the fact that its own Android design choices are not going to be
universal — and in doing so, it's turning the limited availability of that
interface and everything around it into a Pixel feature instead
of a Google liability.
Surface-level
elements aside, Android 12 brings a (long overdue) renewed focus to
Android's widget system along with a host of important foundational
enhancements in the areas of performance, security, and privacy. The update
provides more powerful and accessible controls over how different apps are
using your data and how much information you allow apps to access, for
instance, and it includes a new isolated section of the operating system that
allows A.I. features to operate entirely on a device, without any potential for
network access or data exposure.
On
the enterprise front, specifically, Android 12 has a number of business-aimed
improvements related to password management, certificate management, and
handling of employee-owned managed devices.
Google is expected to release a second Android 12 beta
version in June, a third beta in July, a fourth beta in August, and then the
final Android 12 software sometime in or after August. If the past couple years
are any indication, sometime around early September is a likely window for that
final launch.
Once
again, HAPPY CUBIES DAY!!!
