Full Android OS Version History Till Date
Android, one of the latest and “quickly becoming popular” Operating System has a history that can be traced back to the end of the year 2007; the complete android OS history gives a thorough inside about the development and up-gradation stages of the Operating System which has currently yielded the latest version of Android, Android 4.4 code named KitKat. According to the reports published by Google on September 3rd, 2013, the open source OS android now runs in over 1 billion activated devices throughout the world, and even a steeper growth is expected in the coming years. Here we will go through the complete android version history to get an inside into the stage by stage development of this excellent Operating System which shows great promise.
Android Beta and Android 1.0
Officially, the beta version of Android was released in the month of November, 2007; and there were minimum two internal releases on Google based on the OS and OHA before the beta version rolled out. To mark the internal releases, code names like “Astro-Boy”, “R2-D2” and “Bender” were used. Dan Morrill created the first logo for android, but the current logo that android uses, which we are familiar with, was conceptualized by Irina Blok. The software development kit (SDK) for the beta version came up on November 12th, 2007, whereas the OS was released on 5th of the same month. The very first version of Android, which is the version 1.0 went ‘live’ into the market on September, 2008. Since then consecutive developments and updates have been added to the OS, to make it more effective, and improved.
The Subsequent Android OS Versions:
Many Application Programming Interface (API) updates have been made to the OS since the release of its first commercial version. Android 1.1, was released on February 9th, 2009 which resolved some bugs, implemented some changes including the API and several additional features. All the versions of Android, released after April 2009, were developed with a confectionary code name theme following an alphabetical order. Android 1.5 that comes with API Level 3 was released on 30th April, 2009 based on Linux Kernel 2.6.27.Android 1.6 Donut level 4, officially came into the market on 15th September, of the same year.
The next update was the Android 2.0 Eclair which was based on Linux kernel 2.6.29. This was at API level 5. There were two more releases with the code name Éclair, which basically updated the API level.
- Android version 2.0.1 Eclair (6th Level) and 2.1 (7th Level) were released on 3rd December, and 12th January, of the year 2009 and 2010 respectively.
- 2.2 to 2.2.3 versions Froyo (8th Level) was released between 20th may, 2010 and 21st November, 2011.
- The next updates were versions 2.3 to 2.3.2 with API Level 9 on Gingerbread, and 2.3.3 to 2.3.7 API level 10 on Gingerbread released between December 2010 and September 2011.
- Version 3.0 to 3.2 Honeycomb with API Level 11, 12 and 13 respectively were released from February 2011 to February 2012.
- The next versions, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, and their subsequent updates came into market within October 2011 and October 2013.
Most Recent Updates in Android
The latest and major update 4.4 KitKat, 19th Level was released on 3rd September, 2013. The last update, in the android version history, Android 4.4.2 which is known as KitKat, with enhanced security features was rolled out on 9th December, 2013. This complete android OS history gives a thorough idea how the nascent Android 1.0 has slowly turned to the matured KitKat 4.4.3; and even more updates and advances are expected in future.
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