“Google’s Android operating system has undergone a pretty incredible metamorphosis in the three short years since it debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Think about it: three years, eight major releases. Eight. To put that in perspective, there have only been ten major consumer-grade releases of Windows (give or take, depending on how you count) in over twenty-five years of retail availability. You could make a pretty convincing argument that no consumer technology in history has evolved as quickly as the smartphone, and Android has been at the very center of that evolution. With the release of Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich – on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, we wanted to take a look back through the years at how Andy Rubin’s brainchild has evolved into the industry titan that it is today. What’s changed? What has (sometimes stubbornly) stayed the same?” Fantastic article.
Perhaps this:
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/7/2585779/android-history
Edit: Ah, now, there it is.
Edited 2011-12-09 00:41 UTC
Thanks. Good article.
(o;)
Chrome is on version 11 already and it’s only been available for three years.
What does this mean? Well, that version numbers don’t mean a damn thing when you’re talking about Google (and more recently, their rip-offs at Mozilla).
I felt iffy at the title image with devices that aren’t apparently to scale. they lost me at the big text saying UNSUBSTANTIAL THINGS VERY AUTHORITATIVELY.
I got my Galaxy S in june this year and only available Android version was 2.2.1 but in our region 2.3.2 become available only 9 months LATER!
Question: WHERE IS MY SANDWITCH?!
At http://forum.xda-developers.com/ (You can have your sandwich now, and eat it too, but it may lack some of the special sauce.)
Interesting read. And just think, there are some Android phones being sold today, brand new models, that ship with very early versions of the Android OS, never to be upgraded to a newer version. All that is supposed to change with Ice Cream Sandwich, but based on past experience, I sincerely doubt it.
Where did you hear it was supposed to change?
At Google’s last IO, a range of Android handset manufacturers made some promises regarding updates, including that phones would get updated in 9 month each time a new update which they can run is available.