Android: A visual history By Chris Ziegler

The Verge[1] has an interesting article on the history of Android. It covers the genesis of Android and has interesting photos of the UI as it has evolved over the years.

Here's a brief blurb from the article:

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?

class="indent"> 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:

URL[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/7/2585779/android-history

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