Happy Birthday Android! Back on September 23, 2008, Android 1.o made its debut with T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream making it commercially available for the first time. As we who love the platform know, it has grown exponentially in features, performance and functionality over the past 8 years and it is exciting to think of what the next 8 years hold in store for it.
To be fair, there is a lot of confusion on the Interwebs on the exact birthday of Android but it seems to come down to two dates. The first, September 23, 2008 as I mentioned before being the commercially available date. There is also the date of November 5, 2007. That is the day that the beta of Android 1.0 was made available. It seems pretty clear in Google’s mind however that the September 23rd date is the one of record and clearly is the one they are celebrating.
Regardless of which date is accepted, the bottom line is that from 2007 or 2008 to now, the platform has become the dominant global mobile OS player. That has been fueled by the wide range of
Android Nougat on the Nexus 6P
devices that you can find Android on globally with a wide range of price points to meet any budget. That flexibility and wide range of devices has come at at cost, most notably around security of the platform. Google continues to push hard for OEMs to update their devices quickly for security reasons and Nougat goes a long way in improving device security. While there is always room for improvements, the platform as it is today is light years ahead of where it was 2 years ago and it is hardly recognizable from 8 years ago.
Last year the Android team released a set of birthday wallpapers to celebrate the 7th birthday of the platform. It’s not clear if we will see such things again today but if so, I’ll be sure to post them later in the day.
Happy 8th Birthday Android!
