Android: A visual history

The Android era officially began on October 22nd, 2008, when the T-Mobile G1 launched in the United States. Initially, many features that we couldn't live without today were missing — an on-screen keyboard, multitouch capability, and paid apps, for instance — but the foundation was in place, and a few lasting trademarks of the platform debuted on those very first G1s to roll off the assembly line:

The pull-down notification window. Though these early phones clearly weren't without their flaws, it was almost universally acknowledged that Android nailed the notification system on day one — it would take iOS another three years before launching a design as effective at triaging messages and alerts coming from users' ever-growing collection of mobile apps. The secret was in the G1's unique status bar, which could be dragged downward to reveal every notification in a single list: text messages, voicemails, alarms, and so on. The fundamental concept lives on (in a refined form) even in version 4.0 today.

Home screen widgets. If you had to pick an enduring differentiator for Android as a phone platform — a differentiator it can still claim against iOS 5 and, to some extent, Windows Phone 7.5 — it'd be rich support for widgets on the home screen. Google had big plans for widgets from the very beginning, but there was one big hang-up at launch: developers couldn't create their own widgets.

Deep, rich Gmail integration. By the time the G1 was released, Gmail had long since supported POP and IMAP for integration with mobile email clients — but the problem is that neither one of those protocols are well-suited for supporting some of Gmail's more unique features like archival and labeling. Android 1.0 fixed that in a big way, shipping with by far the best mobile Gmail experience on the market.

The Android Market. It's hard to imagine a smartphone without a centralized app store now, but when Android first shipped, it did so at the very start of the mobile app revolution. Indeed, the Android Market on those first G1s bore little resemblance to the Android Market of today: it launched with just a handful of apps (as you'd expect of an entirely new ecosystem), and didn't have the rich, multifaceted curation that has been added over the last couple versions — instead, it just had a single row of handpicked selections at the top of the app's home screen. Perhaps more importantly, it lacked support for any sort of payment system, a problem that wouldn't get fixed until the following year.

Notably, Google developed Android 1.0's UI with help from The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish interaction design firm responsible for some truly amazing interface concepts over the years. If you look closely, you can see where TAT left its mark on the platform: the analog clock widget included in Android versions 1.0 through 2.2 read "Malmo" in small, light gray type near the bottom of the face, a tribute to TAT's hometown of Malmö, Sweden. The company would later go on to be acquired by RIM to focus solely on advancement of its BlackBerry and BBX platforms — so needless to say, Google's collaboration with TAT has come to an end.

Though it wasn't as big of an upgrade as Cupcake, Android 1.6 Donut was still a far bigger deal than its "0.1" increment would let on. It made another pass of minor visual refinements throughout the platform and added a handful of new and updated, but much of the big news was under the hood. CDMA support was first offered in Donut, for instance, opening the door to American carriers like Verizon and potentially hundreds of millions of subscribers across Asia.

But perhaps none of the "under the hood" changes had a more profound effect on the platform than resolution independence. Donut marked the first time that Android was capable of running on a variety of screen resolutions and aspect ratios, which opened the door for phones that featured displays of something other than 320 x 480 in a portrait orientation. If you look at any carrier's Android lineup today, you're liable to see phones of QVGA, HVGA, WVGA, FWVGA, qHD, and 720p resolution — and maybe even a portrait QWERTY model or two — and that scaling capability traces its roots directly to 1.6.

Donut also introduced the notion of the Quick Search Box, a concept more generally known in the mobile world as "universal search." Prior to Donut, pressing the Search button on an Android phone's keypad while on the home screen would take you to a Google search box for searching the internet, no different than navigating to google.com and typing your search there. With Donut's enhancements, you could search a variety of local content — applications, contacts, and so on — plus the internet all at once from a single box. What's more, Donut exposed functions for developers that allowed them to plug in so that their applications could be searched as well.

What other features debuted in Android 1.6? A redesigned Android Market — designed in the white and green accents so closely associated with Android's mascot — included some additional curation to expose lists of top free and paid apps, particularly important at a time when the platform's third-party app catalog was starting to explode. A redesigned camera interface was also included with better gallery integration and significantly reduced shutter lag, although it didn't garner any more critical acclaim than the one it replaced; Google would continue to make small changes to it through 2.3, though most users would never see it since manufacturers typically replaced it in their skins.

In early November of 2009 — about a year after the G1's premiere — Android 2.0 launched right on Donut's heels. "Big" would be an accurate description all around: it was a big deal, made big promises, and was deployed on big phones offered by big carriers. Eclair, as it was known, was initially offered exclusively on Verizon on none other than the Motorola Droid — the phone that kicked off one of the most successful mobile franchises in history.

What made Eclair so important? It represented the most fundamental refresh that Android had seen since its debut, both visually and architecturally. Of course, with an unheard-of 854 x 480 display, it didn't hurt that the Droid was by far the most powerful Android handset the world had seen at that point — but the significantly improved nuts and bolts of the platform played a big role in the device's retail success, too:

Multiple account support. For the first time, multiple Google accounts could be added to the same device — separate work and personal accounts, for instance — with access to email and contacts from each. Support for Exchange accounts was added, too.

Eclair also gave third parties the tools they needed to plug their own services into this account framework, which would then permit them to be automatically synchronized on an ongoing basis. One key advantage is that shared information between your account types can be automatically synchronized into a single contact on the phone, a one-stop shop for all the information about the individuals in your address book. Facebook was an early adopter of this functionality — in fact, it shipped on the Droid — but a spat with Google over where Facebook's synchronized contact information was ultimately stored ended with its account sync privileges being revoked.

Google Maps Navigation. This was a big one that continues to have an impact on the market even today. Released in conjunction with Android 2.0, Google Maps Navigation was a totally free turn-by-turn automotive navigation product using Google's own mapping data for guidance, and it included many of the features you'd expect to find on a typical in-car navigation system: a forward-looking 3D view, voice guidance (including street names), and traffic information. Considering that drivers had previously needed to choose between paying a significant amount of money for a turn-by-turn app, a monthly fee, or a dedicated navigation unit, Google's move was disruptive, to say the least. Early versions had some flaws that still made alternatives quite appealing - they required continuous internet access, for instance, and couldn't cache - but the system has been closing the gap ever since.

Quick Contact. Just as Cupcake had added contacts' Google Talk statuses throughout the platform, Eclair added the Quick Contact bar, which amounted to a pop-up toolbar that you could use to interact with contacts in a variety of ways — email, text, call, and so on. Wherever in the platform a contact's picture appeared, you could press and hold it to pull up the bar, which would spring into place with a neatly-designed row of icons. The bar was designed from the outset to be extensible, too, so as different types of information got synchronized to your contacts — Twitter handles, for instance - they could be added to the bar.

Soft keyboard improvements. Like the G1, the Droid launched with a full physical QWERTY arrangement, but Google still saw fit to use it as an opportunity to showcase a revised virtual keyboard. Although multitouch still wasn't fully supported throughout the platform — the Browser and Maps apps both lacked pinch-to-zoom, for instance — Eclair used multitouch data on the keyboard to detect secondary presses while typing rapidly, which can make a big difference in accuracy for fast typists.

Revamped browser. As mentioned earlier, Eclair's browser still didn't feature support for multitouch zooming, but it advanced in a number of other critical ways. Considering that Android 2.0 launched on a device with a capacious (for the time) WVGA display, it was critical that the Browser app be up to the task of displaying complex, desktop-optimized sites. To that end, Google added HTML5 support, including video (albeit only in full-screen mode). This was also the first time that Android's browser had a proper address bar, which Google had designed to mimic Chrome by doubling as a search bar. And to help alleviate the lack of multitouch, the new version added double-tap zooming — a convenient alternative to the zoom-in / zoom-out buttons.

There were countless other changes that touched nearly every screen in Eclair, too. Google continued its trend of warming over the UI in the latest version, but the changes generally felt more cohesive in 2.0 with cleaner, simpler icons and widgets designed to work well at the Droid's crisper resolution. Android 2.0 was essentially a lone wolf — outside of the Droid and its European equivalent, the Milestone, virtually every phone to launch after Eclair's release came with Android 2.1 instead, which did little more than fix a few bugs and add a small number of API capabilities. The telltale sign that it wasn't a big release? Google didn't grant it a new name - both 2.0 and 2.1 were known as Eclair. There were, however, a couple additions in 2.1 worth noting:

Live wallpapers. One of Android's quirkier features, live wallpapers first made an appearance in Android 2.1. The concept is simple enough: instead of a static image, the home screen's background is an actual application that can be animated and have some limited interaction with the user. Google itself demonstrated the power of the feature when it added a live wallpaper to a Google Maps update, which turned the home screen into an overhead map of the phone's current location - not particularly easy on battery drain, but a great conversation piece.

Speech-to-text. Google had been pushing the power of text-to-speech (TTS) since it added a developer framework for TTS engines in Donut, and now it was going the other direction - users could talk into their phones as a replacement for traditional keyboard input. To facilitate that, Android 2.1 replaced the comma key on the soft keyboard with a microphone; tap it, talk, and whichever text box you had highlighted would receive the dictation. And by all appearances, the capability isn't going anywhere - Apple added a similar feature to the keyboard in iOS 5.

A new lock screen. Android 2.0 had actually included a new lock screen of its own that featured the ability to swipe the screen to unlock and change the phone's mute mode, but it was tweaked a second time in 2.1. The functionality remained largely the same this time, but Google changed the clock typeface from a standard sans serif to a distinctly more Android-esque, high-tech font and modified the unlock and mute functions to require a straight swipe rather than a curved one.

Android 2.2 was released in mid-2010, and the advantage of the Nexus program was starting to become clear: the Nexus One was the first to get updated. What did Google have to showcase in Froyo? Plenty. From the first power-on, the redesigned home screen was instantly recognizable: gone was the old three-panel view (which dated back to Android 1.0), replaced by a five-panel one with a new group of dedicated, translucent shortcuts at the bottom for the phone, web browser, and app launcher. Additionally, dots on either side of the shortcuts gave the user an indication of what panel they were currently viewing. In some ways, Google was playing catch-up here — third-party skins like HTC's Sense had already done all of these things.

Froyo also included a completely redesigned Gallery app that showcased the platform's 3D chops for the very first time: tilting the phone would cause the images to tilt on the screen, for instance, and it included a variety of high-quality animates when moving between individual galleries and photos. Really, though, the app was little more than a one-off, not an indication of Android's direction as a platform (Google had actually outsourced its development to an outside firm).

Other big features included mobile hotspot support — which many carriers would disable or provision at extra cost when selling their own Froyo devices — and better support for copy / paste in Gmail, patching one of the platform's bigger clipboard shortcomings. Google also added a traditional password / PIN lock screen for users who didn't like Android's unique pattern lock or required something more secure as part of their corporate policy. More generally, it was around the launch of 2.2 that it appeared Google intended to start taking Android seriously in enterprise environments where BlackBerry traditionally held an unbreakable stronghold, and a handful of Exchange-specific enhancements here helped drive that point home.

Gingerbread was, in many ways, a relatively minor release — but there were enough "minor" changes to collectively make for a fairly large improvement in the platform. For one thing, it was the most significant reskinning of the platform since Eclair: stock widgets were refreshed (including the ubiquitous "Malmo" analog clock), the home screen's UI elements gained a hint of green, and the status bar was inverted so it had a black background with white text. This seemingly trivial change actually had a pretty big effect on the appearance of the platform — it instantly looked cleaner and more modern — but in reality, Google probably did it primarily to reduce battery drain and the effects of burn-in on AMOLED displays.

Android 2.3 included a good mix of new functionality, too:

More granular control over copy and paste. Android's support for clipboard operations had been lagging iOS since Apple released version 3.0 in mid-2009, which offered a fantastic level of character-by-character highlight control using a magnifying glass to make the cursor easier to operate with a finger. Prior to Gingerbread, stock Android only offered the ability to copy the contents of entire text boxes, which was frequently (usually, even) not what you wanted to do. Gingerbread fixed this, adding word-by-word highlighting with finger-draggable anchors on either end to facilitate adjusting the highlight. As with the home screen improvements in Froyo, this was another area where Google was catching up to the innovations that some of its OEMs had already been including in their skins for some time — HTC had already grafted similar functionality into prior releases.

An improved keyboard. Google once again tweaked its stock keyboard for 2.3, and this time it was noticeable to the naked eye — the design and coloration of the keys changed significantly for the first time since the keyboard's introduction in Cupcake. Multitouch support also improved with "chording," allowing users to press multi-key combinations to quickly access the secondary symbol keyboard.

Better battery and app management tools. Android had been dinged by some for being too effective in supporting multitasking — by letting software run free in the background, battery life was always at risk of taking a big hit, particularly if a user had loaded poorly-designed apps. Gingerbread helped make that a little easier to fix with a new bundled utility for graphically viewing battery drain over time and seeing exactly what apps and system functions are eating the most power (of course, the onus was still on the user to uninstall offending apps or adjust their usage).

Support for front-facing cameras. Though it wouldn't be until mid-2010 that Google Talk would gain mobile video chat support, Gingerbread laid the groundwork for that functionality by supporting multiple cameras on a single device. Indeed, Google had the foresight to specify a front-facing camera on the Nexus S, though you couldn't use it for much other than taking pictures of yourself when the device first launched.

Other new features of Gingerbread were targeted more at developers than end users: NFC support, for one, which was available on the Nexus S by way of a special antenna embedded in the battery cover. For many months, this capability was little more than a novelty — you could scan Google Places signs in some cities to collect URLs with more information on the location, for instance, much as you would a QR code — but Google later used Sprint's version of the Nexus S to launch Google Wallet, a major mobile payment initiative. Many companies are betting the farm on the future of NFC and mobile payments, and Gingerbread was on the bleeding edge of that push.

Google also used the launch of Gingerbread as an opportunity to gain some footing in the mobile gaming market, an area where it had lagged iOS significantly. The new version gave developers lower-level access to audio, device controls, graphics, and storage, which allowed them to write considerably faster native code — absolutely key for creating the rich, graphics-intensive 3D games that the platform lacked.

Honeycomb was, to say the least, an oddity — a divergence in Google's hard-charging path toward smartphone dominance. In fact, Honeycomb wasn't for smartphones at all. Instead, Google returned to Motorola — the company that it had worked with to deliver Android 2.0 exclusively on the Droid — to produce a device in the same vein as the Nexus series that would showcase "stock" Android 3.0, a variant of Android targeted exclusively at tablets. That device would become the Xoom.

Though Honeycomb hasn't seen the levels of market traction that Google was probably aiming for, it previewed a fundamental redesign of Android's user interface that would be more thoroughly built out in Android 4.0:

A move from green to blue accents. Green was, is, and likely forever will be associated with Android. The Android logo is bright green, of course, and Google's official Android site is covered in green accents. On the actual platform, though, green was shown the door with the release of Honeycomb. In its place, a light, desaturated blue was used for the battery and signal indicators, the clock widget, and a variety of highlights and trim pieces throughout the interface.

Redesigned home screen and widget placement. Rather than choosing home screen widgets from a list, sight unseen, Honeycomb ratcheted up the user friendliness a couple notches by showing visible previews for each type of widget available on the system — and once you choose your widget, you can place it on any of Honeycomb's five home screen panels from a single, zoomed-out view showing all five at once. Though Android had always used a grid for widget and icon placement on the home screen, Honeycomb did a better job of embracing it and exposing it to the user — below each widget preview, you can see exactly how many "grid squares" it'll consume once placed.

The death of physical buttons. On a Honeycomb tablet, there's no need for dedicated, physical buttons for Back, Home, Menu, and Search as there had been on phones running 2.3 and below — instead, Back and Home have become virtual buttons that occupy a new "system bar" at the bottom of the screen. Because they're virtual, the operating system has the flexibility to show, hide, or change them when it makes sense to do so — and for hardware manufacturers, less bezel space needs to be devoted to supporting hardware buttons.

Improved multitasking. Borrowing a page out of webOS's playbook (keep in mind that webOS design guru Matias Duarte was employed by Google by the time Honeycomb was released), a new Recent Apps virtual button at the bottom of the screen produces a list of apps recently used — and more importantly, screen captures for each. On Gingerbread and prior, seeing recently-used apps involved a long-press of the Home key — something users would rarely think to do — and you were presented only with each app's icon, not a helpful thumbnail.

A new paradigm for app layout. Honeycomb introduced the concept of the "action bar," a permanently-placed bar at the top of each app that developers can use to show frequently-accessed options, context menus, and so on — it's something of a dedicated status bar for each individual application. Additionally, Honeycomb introduced support for multi-column app layouts, a nod toward the version's tight focus on tablets.

Android 3.1 and 3.2 were primarily maintenance releases (hence their continued use of the Honeycomb name), but they did produce a couple important features that have been retroactively deployed to most Android 3.0 tablets on the market. 3.1 added support for resizeable home screen widgets using anchors that appear when pressing and holding; a variety of third-party skins had supported widget resizing previously, but Android 3.1 pulled the functionality into the core platform.