I am currently working on an Introduction to Android video series for SitePoint, which will be ready soon. As part of the first two instalments I was researching into the History of Android, it’s developments and the players involved.
I came across this amazing post from Ars Technica that gives an incredibly in-depth overview of the different Android versions over the years and their features and peculiarities.
Aside from this insight into the development of a (now) major operating system it highlighted how our increasing reliance on ‘cloud’ services has made it harder to keep ‘old’ devices active, usable or even for a brief reminisce. Food for thought.
What are your earliest memories of Android? What version of the OS did you begin with and what phone? What did you love or hate about the OS at that time?
I had one of the early Android smart phones - T Mobile G1. Issued by my employer at the time. It was great but as with all things Google, the OS developed at an alarming rate and within no time new Apps refused to install and the business had to abandon them sharpish!
Migrating data across was generally a non starter but there were a couple of important programmes our company used - a programmer had to be employed and I recall him running an emulator on his PC to recover the data. After recovering the data and paying him off, the new programme couldn’t import it!