Android: Visual History of Google's Operating System on the Occasion of Its 10th Anniversary

Google's Android operating system has undergone a pretty incredible makeover since its launch on the T-Mobile G1 on October 22, 2008. A decade may seem like a long time, but on the scale of PC growth, Is a nod to the eye. You could argue convincingly enough that no mainstream technology in history has evolved as fast as the smartphone, and Android has been at the center of this evolution.

When Android was launched, the operating system entered a crowded but disrupted market. Apple had officially entered the smartphone market the year before, BlackBerry was still at its peak, Symbian was about to disappear and Microsoft would soon replace Windows Mobile by Windows Phone. But today, Android is installed on almost all devices other than Apple, ahead of almost all other competitors. In 2017, there were more than 2 billion active Android devices a month in the world. On smartphones, Android accounts for more than 85% of these devices.

After 10 years of operating the world's most dominant operating system, we wanted to go back to how Andy Rubin's invention evolved to become the titan of the industry it is today. What has changed? What remained (sometimes stubbornly) the same? What new updates have come with each version? Since Android is a free operating system, different manufacturers have applied their own skins – that is to say the Samsung TouchWiz, the OnePlus OxygenOS – so we focus on the Android stock for this history visual. The Android we know today – with all its machine learning capabilities and digital voice assistant – has not lost its share of disorder before reaching its current level. Its many innovations would inspire, borrow or improve other features of its main competitor, the Apple iOS.

Where it all started

The Android era officially started on October 22, 2008, when the T-Mobile G1 was launched in the United States. Initially, it lacked many features that we could not live without today – on-screen keyboard, multitouch features and paid apps, for example – but the baseline was in place and some durable brands of the platform debuted on these same early G1s to break out of the assembly line.

The drop-down notification window. Although these first phones were clearly endowed with their flaws, it was almost universally recognized that Android was using the notification system from day one. It would take another three years for iOS to launch such an efficient design for sorting messages and alerts from the ever-growing collection of mobile apps. The secret was in the G1's single status bar, which could be moved down to display each notification in a single list: text messages, voice messages, alarms, and so on. The fundamental concept continues (in a refined form) to the latest current version of Android.

Widgets of the home screen. If you had to choose a durable differentiator for Android as a phone platform, it would be a rich support for the widgets on the home screen. From the beginning, Google had planned big widgets, but there was a big problem at launch: developers could not create their own widgets.

Deep and rich Gmail integration. At the release of G1, Gmail has long supported POP and IMAP for integration with mobile email clients. But the problem is that none of these protocols were well suited to support some of Gmail's most unique features, such as archiving and tagging. Android 1.0 solved this problem decisively and provided by far the best mobile Gmail experience on the market.

The Android Market. It's hard to imagine a smartphone without a centralized application store now, but when Android was launched, it was at the very beginning of the mobile application revolution. Indeed, the Android Market on the first G1 hardly resembled the Play Store of today: it was launched only with a handful of applications (like one could expect from a whole new ecosystem) and did not have a rich and multifaceted curation. which has been added over the years. Instead, there was only one row of selections handpicked at the top of the application's home screen. More importantly, there was a lack of support for any type of payment system, a problem that would not be resolved until the next year.

In particular, Google has developed the Android 1.0 user interface with the help of The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish interaction design company that has been creating truly amazing interface concepts over the years. (If you take a closer look, you can see where TAT has left its mark on the platform: the analog clock widget included in the Android 1.0 to 2.2 "Malmo" version in small light gray characters near the bottom of the face tribute to TAT hometown of Malmo, Sweden.) The company will then be acquired by RIM to focus solely on the development of its BlackBerry and BBX platforms. Google's collaboration with TAT has ended.

Android 1.1

The first Android platform upgrade took place in February 2009, just over three months after the launch of the G1. Version 1.1 was not a revolution, but it corrected a long list of bugs, but at least it was worth nothing to validate the ability of Android to deploy updates over the air and make them almost free. effort to install them. . At the time, it was a big problem, and no other major smartphone platform was doing it.

It is no coincidence that the Danger'Hiptop platform, which gave birth to Sidekick, has been offering wireless and multi-phase wireless system updates for years. Andy Rubin of Android had previously founded Danger and would later create the Essential phone, the smartphone that marked the beginning of the current trend in omnipresent notch design.

Dessert is served: 1.5 "Cupcake"

Android 1.5 – perhaps better known by its code name "Cupcake" – marks much more a milestone. It's not just the fact that he has added several highly anticipated features that were essential to keep the platform competitive. It was also the first version to use the "soft" naming convention of Google: every major publication since Cupcake was named after a sweet confectionery in alphabetical order. The trend has continued and is expected to continue. The 10 Q version of next year will be the biggest naming challenge of Android so far.

In many ways, Cupcake was about refining, polishing some of the edges of the user interface that was originally launched. Some of these changes were almost imperceptible if you did not look for them. For example, the standard Google search widget – the basic element on many home screens – was slightly transparent, and the application drawer was decorated with a subtle weave pattern under the icons.

Hover over the image below to get an idea of ​​the subtlety of these changes. If you used a 1.1 and 1.5 device successively, you might not notice anything. in reality, everything from the alignment of the text to the shading of the status bar, was passed under the knife.

Most G1 users probably skipped over these UI changes without realizing it, as the exhaustive list of new features introduced by Google was much more interesting, noticeable, and immediately relevant in the context of Daily use:

A keyboard on the screen. In retrospect, it's amazing to think that Google could have provided Android without any sort of software keyboard, but that's exactly what it did. This partly explains why the first retail Android device was a QWERTY slider in landscape mode, and also explains why it's only since the release of Cupcake (in April 2009, about six months after the release of the G1), that we saw the first touchscreen- Only phone on the market, the HTC Magic.

Together with the support of the software keyboard, Google has taken a bold step: it has integrated the necessary hooks to third-party developers to create their own replacement keyboards, a feature that differentiates Android platforms competing platforms for years. At the time of the release of Cupcake, there were many who thought that the Android virtual keyboard was late on iOS in terms of accuracy and speed, which ultimately led OEMs such as HTC to quickly develop alternatives on their own devices. Indeed, it was one of the first forms of "skinning" that Android would see.

Extensible widgets. Although Android 1.0 and 1.1 technically include widgets, their potential has not yet been fully exploited, as Google had not exposed the SDK to developers. The only widgets available were the few contents in the box. This has changed to 1.5, and today, many (if not most) third-party applications on the platform come with one or more widgets available to the user. This is a big deal for Android, which continues to enjoy the most flexible and expandable home screen of any mobile platform – and this title has its roots in the addition of this feature in Cupcake.

Improved clipboard. Android had a rough enough road to get "full" support for copy and paste. Technically, the platform supported it from the first day, but it was largely limited to text fields and links. This meant that the text could not be copied from the browser window or from Gmail, two places where you would most likely want to do it. Although Gmail does not have all the features of the Clipboard for multiple additional versions, Cupcake has added browser support, allowing you to copy plain text from a page.

Video capture and playback. It's hard to imagine a smartphone shipping without any support for filming now, but that's the situation that T-Mobile G1 buyers were originally at. Cupcake would solve the problem, but like the integrated software keyboard of Android, the built-in operating system The in-camera interface has become one of the most criticized parts of the platform. It's also a part that builders have quickly replaced with their own improved interfaces, frequently adding support for additional scenes, modes, options, and features, such as touch to focus.

And much more. Miscellaneous updates included batching in Gmail (you could not delete or archive multiple emails at once before version 1.5), support support for YouTube and Picasa, and ubiquitous access to Google Talk status of your contacts on the platform, for example at the Contacts screen. the email application and Gmail. (In a way, this feature – the timing of rich contact information on multiple apps and screens – would indicate the direction in which Android was heading, especially in version 2.0.)

1.6: "Donut"

Although the upgrade was not as important as Cupcake, Android 1.6 Donut was still a lot more ambitious than it would be with its "0.1" progress. He made another pass of minor visual improvements on the entire platform, but much of the big news was under the hood. CDMA support was first proposed in Donut, opening the door to US operators like Verizon and potentially to hundreds of millions of subscribers in Asia.

But perhaps none of the "under the hood" changes had a deeper effect on the platform than the independence of the resolution. Donut was the first time that Android was able to work with a variety of screen resolutions and display formats, which opened the door to phones displaying a display other than 320 x 480 in portrait orientation. All of these scaling capabilities are rooted directly in 1.6.

Donut also introduced the notion of quick search field, a concept more commonly known as "universal search" in the world of mobile telephony. Before Donut, press the search button on the keyboard of an Android phone while the home screen led you to Google. A search field to conduct searches on the Internet, which was no different from browsing on google.com and entering your search. With Donut enhancements, you can search for a variety of local content – apps, contacts, and more. – as well as the Internet in one go. In addition, Donut exposed developers to features that allowed them to connect so that their applications could also be searched.

What other features debuted in Android 1.6? The redesigned Android Market – with white and green accents so closely associated with the Android mascot – included an additional curation to display the list of the best free and paid apps, which was particularly important at a time when the catalog of third-party applications of the platform began to explode. A redesigned camera interface has also been included, providing better gallery integration and a significantly reduced lag time, though not as successful as the one it replaced. Google would continue to make small changes via 2.3, although most users have never seen it since manufacturers normally replaced it. It would only be when Google released its latest flagship product, Pixel, that the company would begin to be considered the best smartphone camera on the market, at the user interface, and so on.

2.0 / 2.1: "Flash"

In early November 2009, about a year after the first G1, Android 2.0 was launched on the heels of Donut. "Big" would be an accurate description: it was a big problem, it was big promises and it was deployed on big phones offered by major operators. Eclair, as it's called, was originally offered exclusively on Verizon with the Motorola Droid, the phone that launched one of the most successful mobile phone franchises of its era.

What made Eclair so important? It was the most fundamental update that Android has known since its inception, both visually and architecturally. Of course, with an unprecedented 854 x 480 screen, the Droid was by far the most powerful Android handset the world has ever seen. But the significant improvements of the platform also played an important role in the success of the device:

Support for multiple accounts For the first time, multiple Google Accounts could be added to the same device (work accounts and separate personal, for example), with access to email and contacts from everyone. Support for Exchange accounts has also been added.

Eclair also provided third parties with the necessary tools to integrate their own services into this account framework, which would then allow them to synchronize automatically and continuously. A key benefit is that information shared between your account types can be automatically synchronized into a single contact on the phone, a one-stop shop for all the information about people in your address book. Facebook was one of the first users of this feature (in fact, it was delivered on the Droid), but a niche with Google where Facebook's synchronized contact information was finally stored in it's own. is terminated with the revocation of its account synchronization privileges.

Google Maps Navigation. Published with Android 2.0, Google Maps Navigation is a completely free car navigation product, using Google's own map data, for guidance purposes. It includes many features that you would expect in a typical embedded navigation. system: a prospective 3D view, voice guidance (including street names) and traffic information. Considering that drivers had to choose between paying a large sum for a detailed application, a monthly fee or a dedicated navigation unit, Google's move was disturbing to say the least. The early versions had some flaws that made the alternatives very attractive: they required permanent Internet access, for example, but could not be hiding, but the system has since closed the gap.

Quick contact. Just as Cupcake had added Google Talk statuses to its contacts on the platform, Eclair added the quick contacts bar, which is a contextual toolbar that you can use to interact with contacts in different ways. : email, text, calls and. soon. Whenever the contact image appears on the platform, you can press and hold it to pull the bar, which will come up with a row of well-crafted icons. The bar was designed from the start to be expandable too. Thus, different types of information have been synchronized with your contact. Twitter handles, for example, could be added to the bar.

Soft keyboard enhancements. Like the G1, the droid was launched with a complete physical QWERTY arrangement, but Google nevertheless found it useful to use it as an opportunity to present a revised virtual keyboard. Although the multitouch is still not fully supported across the platform (the Browser and Maps applications were lacking for example pinch to zoom), Eclair was using multitouch data on the keyboard to detect secondary hits when typing fast, which made a big difference in accuracy. for fast typists.

Revamped browser. As mentioned earlier, Eclair's browser still has not supported multitouch zoom, but it has evolved in many other critical ways. Considering that Android 2.0 was launched on a device with a large WVGA screen (at the moment), it was essential that the Browser application be up to show complex sites optimized for computers Office. To this end, Google has added support for HTML5, including video (but only in full-screen mode). It was also the first time that the Android browser had an appropriate address bar, designed by Google to imitate Chrome also acting as a search bar. And to help reduce the multitouch, the new version added the double-taped zoom – a handy alternative to the zoom in / out buttons.

There have been countless other changes that have affected almost all Eclair screens. In the most recent version, Google has maintained its tendency to warm up the user interface, but the changes made seem generally more consistent in version 2.0 with simpler and simpler icons and widgets, designed to work properly at the same time. the sharper resolution of the droid. Android 2.0 was essentially a lone wolf – apart from the Droid and its European equivalent, the Milestone, virtually all the phones that were launched after the release of Eclair came in the place of Android 2.1, this which has only repaired some bugs and added a small number of APIs. capabilities. The telltale sign that it was not a big exit? Google did not give him a new name. versions 2.0 and 2.1 were both called Flash. There have however been some notable additions in 2.1.

Animated wallpapers. One of the most bizarre features of Android, animated wallpapers have appeared in Android 2.1. The concept is quite simple: instead of a static image, the background of the home screen is an application that can be animated and has limited interaction with the user. Google has demonstrated the power of this feature by adding an animated screen background to an updated Google Maps, turning the home screen into a map above the current phone position. . Battery depletion was not particularly easy, but it was an excellent topic of conversation.

Speech in text. Google exercised the power of speech synthesis since the addition of a development framework for TTS engines in Donut. But now users could talk on their phone instead of traditional keyboard input. To make this easier, Android 2.1 has replaced the comma key on the software keyboard with a microphone; when you tap and speak, regardless of which text area you have highlighted, the dictation will be received. And apparently, this ability is not going anywhere. Apple has added a similar feature to the keyboard in iOS 5.

A new lock screen. Android 2.0 had actually included a new lock screen that allowed the screen to slide to unlock and change the phone's mute mode, but it was changed a second time in 2.1. The functionality remained pretty much the same this time around, but Google changed the clock character from a standard sans serif font to a distinctly more high-tech Android font, and changed the unlocking features and mute off to require a straight scan rather than curved.

Although this is not an important update, Android 2.1 has marked a strategic change for Google. Perhaps concerned about the trend of its hardware partners to strip and significantly change the "standard" Android experience, Google chose to work directly with HTC to create its own flagship device, a phone that would introduce the Android version 2.1 pure without any modification. Android as Google had planned, so to speak. That's how the Nexus One was born: a slim, keyless device with one of the industry's first 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and an advanced WVGA resolution AMOLED display. He was well ahead of his time and has since become one of the most famous Android phones ever produced.

In fact, Google started on this path in Android 2.0 with the Motorola Droid. Google and Moto worked closely on the development of the phone and the Droid received Eclair well before anyone else. But it was not quite "pure" – the Droid made some UI adjustments that do not appear in the platform's stock versions – and Google never sold the Droid directly to users. This has changed with the Nexus One.

2.2: "Froyo"

Android 2.2 came out in mid-2010 and the benefit of the Nexus program was beginning to be felt: the Nexus One was the first to be updated. What did Google have to present to Froyo? A lot. From the first power up, the redesigned home screen was instantly recognizable: the old three-panel view (which dated back to Android 1.0) had been replaced by another five-panel with a new one group of dedicated, translucent functions. shortcuts at the bottom for the phone, the web browser and the launcher. In addition, points on either side of the shortcuts gave the user an indication of the currently displayed panel. In some ways, Google was catching up here; third-party skins such as HTC's Sense had already done all these things.

Froyo also included a completely redesigned Gallery application that presented for the first time the platform's 3D performance: tilting the phone would tilt the images on the screen, for example, and included a variety of features. High quality animations when you move galleries and photos. In reality, the application was only a single piece, and not an indication of the direction taken by Android as a platform. (Google had in fact outsourced its development to an outside company.)

Other important features include support for mobile access points – which many operators disables or provides at an additional cost when selling their own Froyo devices – and better support for copying / copying. stick in Gmail, correcting one of the biggest gaps in the clipboard. Google has also added a traditional password / PIN lock screen for users who did not like the unique Android style lock or who were looking for something more secure as part of their strategy. d & # 39; company. More generally, it was around the launch of version 2.2 that Google apparently intended to start taking Android seriously in corporate environments where BlackBerry traditionally held an indestructible fortress and where a handful of enhancements specific to Exchange helped to get this home off the ground.

2.3: "Spice bread"

About a year and a half after the launch of Froyo on the Nexus One, Google is back to participate in a new step of the Nexus program to support the release of Android 2.3. This time, she chose Samsung to produce the Nexus S, a derivative of the Galaxy S range, which had been a great success. Although the Nexus One it replaces is not much more advanced, the two phones would not have looked so different, thanks in large part to a new curved glass screen and a shiny all-black shell. The ubiquitous trackball on the screen was no longer. With the Nexus S, it appeared that Google was finally ready to bid farewell to the hardware navigation of the user interface. For Andy Rubin, the transition might have been a difficult choice: the trackball had always been a flagship feature of the Danger line of devices and he had introduced it for the G1.

Spice bread was, in many ways, a relatively minor version, but there were enough "minor" changes to collectively make a fairly significant improvement to the deck. First of all, this is the most important transformation of the platform since Eclair: the action widgets have been updated (including the ubiquitous analog clock "Malmo"), the elements of the UI of the 'home screen took a hint of green and the status bar was reversed. had a black background with white text. This seemingly trivial change had a fairly significant effect on the appearance of the platform. It immediately seemed cleaner and more modern. But in reality, Google has probably mainly done to reduce battery consumption and burn-in effects on AMOLED displays.

Android 2.3 also includes a good mix of new features.

A more granular control over the copy and paste. La prise en charge d'Android pour les opérations du presse-papiers avait pris du retard sur iOS depuis la publication par Apple de la version 3.0 à la mi-2009, qui offrait un niveau fantastique de contrôle de la surbrillance caractère par caractère à l'aide d'une loupe pour faciliter l'utilisation du curseur avec le doigt. Avant Gingerbread, Android n’offrait que la possibilité de copier le contenu de zones de texte entières, ce qui n’était souvent pas (normalement, même) ce que vous vouliez faire. Gingerbread a corrigé ce problème en ajoutant une surbrillance mot par mot avec des ancres déplaçables au doigt à chaque extrémité pour faciliter le réglage de la surbrillance. À l'instar des améliorations apportées à l'écran d'accueil de Froyo, Google rattrapait les innovations que certains de ses équipementiers intégraient déjà depuis un certain temps déjà dans leur peau. HTC avait déjà greffé des fonctionnalités similaires dans des versions antérieures.

Un clavier amélioré. Google a encore une fois peaufiné son clavier d'origine pour la version 2.3, et cette fois, il était visible à l'œil nu. La conception et la coloration des touches ont considérablement changé pour la première fois depuis l’introduction du clavier dans Cupcake. La prise en charge multitouch a également été améliorée avec la fonction «accords», qui permet aux utilisateurs d’appuyer sur des combinaisons multiples pour accéder rapidement au clavier du symbole secondaire.

Meilleurs outils de gestion de la batterie et des applications. Android avait été appelé par certains pour être as well efficace pour supporter le multitâche. En laissant les logiciels s'exécuter librement en arrière-plan, la durée de vie de la batterie risquait toujours de prendre un coup dur, en particulier si un utilisateur avait chargé des applications mal conçues. Gingerbread a permis de simplifier un peu la tâche grâce à un nouvel utilitaire intégré permettant de visualiser graphiquement l’épuisement de la batterie au fil du temps et de voir exactement quelles applications et quelles fonctions du système consomment le plus d’énergie. (Bien entendu, il incombait toujours à l'utilisateur de désinstaller les applications incriminées ou de modifier leur utilisation.)

Prise en charge des caméras frontales. Bien que ce ne soit pas avant le milieu de 2010 que Google Talk obtienne une assistance pour le chat vidéo mobile, Gingerbread a jeté les bases de cette fonctionnalité en prenant en charge plusieurs caméras sur un seul appareil. En effet, Google a eu la clairvoyance de spécifier un appareil photo de face sur le Nexus S, bien que vous ne puissiez pas l'utiliser pour autre chose que pour prendre des photos de vous-même lors du premier lancement de l'appareil.

Les nouvelles fonctionnalités de Gingerbread étaient davantage destinées aux développeurs qu'aux utilisateurs finaux: le support NFC, par exemple, était disponible sur le Nexus S au moyen d’une antenne spéciale intégrée dans le cache de la batterie. Pendant de nombreux mois, cette fonctionnalité n’était qu’une nouveauté: vous pouviez, par exemple, numériser les panneaux de Google Adresses dans certaines villes pour collecter des URL contenant davantage d’informations sur l'emplacement, comme vous le feriez avec un code QR. Google a ensuite utilisé la version de Sprint. du Nexus S pour lancer Google Wallet, une initiative majeure de paiement mobile. De nombreuses entreprises continuent de parier la ferme sur l'avenir des paiements NFC et mobiles, et Gingerbread était à la pointe de ce mouvement.

Google a également utilisé le lancement de Gingerbread comme une opportunité pour se faire une place sur le marché du jeu mobile, un domaine dans lequel iOS avait pris un retard important. La nouvelle version donnait aux développeurs un accès de niveau inférieur à l'audio, aux commandes de périphérique, aux graphiques et au stockage, ce qui leur permettait d'écrire du code natif beaucoup plus rapide. Cela était absolument essentiel pour créer les jeux 3D riches en graphiques exigeants qui manquaient à la plate-forme.

3.X: “Nid d'abeille”

Honeycomb était, pour le moins qu'on puisse dire, une bizarrerie. Il s’agissait d’une divergence dans la trajectoire difficile de Google vers la domination des smartphones. En fait, Honeycomb n’était pas du tout pour les smartphones. Au lieu de cela, Google est retourné à Motorola – la société avec laquelle elle travaillait pour livrer Android 2.0 exclusivement sur le Droid – afin de produire un appareil dans la même veine que la série Nexus qui présenterait le «stock» Android 3.0, une variante d'Android ciblée exclusivement à des comprimés. Cet appareil deviendrait le Xoom.

Bien que Honeycomb n’ait pas encore vu le niveau de pénétration du marché que visait probablement Google, il prévoyait une refonte fondamentale de l’interface utilisateur d’Android qui serait plus précisément intégrée à Android 4.0.

Un mouvement du vert au bleu. Le vert était, est et sera probablement associé pour toujours à Android. Le logo Android est vert clair et le site Android officiel de Google est couvert d’accents verts. Sur la plate-forme proprement dite, on a montré à Green la porte avec la sortie de Honeycomb. À sa place, une lumière bleue désaturée a été utilisée pour les indicateurs de batterie et de signal, le widget Horloge, ainsi que pour une variété de points saillants et de découpes tout au long de l'interface.

Écran d'accueil repensé et placement du widget. Plutôt que de choisir des widgets d’écran d’accueil dans une liste, Honeycomb a amélioré la convivialité de quelques crans en affichant des aperçus visibles pour chaque type de widget disponible sur le système. Une fois que vous avez choisi votre widget, vous pouvez le placer sur l’un des cinq panneaux de l’écran d’accueil de Honeycomb à partir d’une seule vue agrandie affichant tous les cinq éléments en même temps. Bien qu'Android ait toujours utilisé une grille pour le placement des widgets et des icônes sur l'écran d'accueil, Honeycomb a mieux fait de l'adopter et de l'exposer à l'utilisateur. Sous chaque aperçu du widget, vous pouvez voir exactement combien de «carrés de la grille» il consomme une fois placés.

La mort des boutons physiques. Sur une tablette Honeycomb, il n’était pas nécessaire d’utiliser des boutons physiques dédiés pour les fonctions Retour, Domicile, Menu et Recherche, comme il en existait déjà sur les téléphones fonctionnant sous la version 2.3 ou inférieure. Au lieu de cela, Back and Home sont devenus des boutons virtuels qui occupent une nouvelle «barre système» en bas de l'écran. Parce qu’ils sont virtuels, le système d’exploitation avait la possibilité de les afficher, de les masquer ou de les modifier s’il était logique de le faire. Pour les fabricants de matériel, il fallait moins d’espace pour le panneau avant pour la prise en charge des boutons de matériel.

Multitâche amélioré. Borrowing a page out of webOS’s playbook (keep in mind that webOS design guru Matias Duarte was employed by Google by the time Honeycomb was released), a Recent Apps virtual button at the bottom of the screen produced a list of apps that were recently used. More importantly, there were screen captures for each. On Gingerbread and prior, seeing recently used apps involved a long press of the Home key — something users would rarely think to do — and you were presented only with each app’s icon, not a helpful thumbnail.

A new paradigm for app layout. Honeycomb introduced the concept of the “action bar,” a permanently placed bar at the top of each app that developers could use to show frequently accessed options, context menus, and so on. It was something of a dedicated status bar for each individual application. Additionally, Honeycomb introduced support for multicolumn app layouts, a nod toward the version’s tight focus on tablets.

Android 3.1 and 3.2 were primarily maintenance releases (hence their continued use of the Honeycomb name), but they did produce a couple of important features that have been retroactively deployed to most Android 3.0 tablets on the market. 3.1 added support for resizeable home screen widgets using anchors that appear when pressing and holding; a variety of third-party skins had supported widget resizing previously, but Android 3.1 pulled the functionality into the core platform.

4.0: “Ice Cream Sandwich”

Android 4.0 arrived first to the Galaxy Nexus, Google’s return to the Nexus program, and a second visit to Samsung, which had provided the Nexus S for the launch of Gingerbread. Ice Cream Sandwich was, without question, the biggest change for Android on phones at the time. But many of its new features and design elements got their start in Honeycomb, including virtual buttons, the transition from green to blue accents, improved widget support, multitasking with a scrollable list of thumbnails, and “action bars” within applications.

Longtime Android users are well-acquainted with Droid, the custom-designed typeface that’s been used since 1.0. Ice Cream Sandwich replaced it with another bespoke font — Roboto — that was said to be designed to take better advantage of the higher-resolution displays.

Google’s vice president of design Matias Duarte noted that the old font “struggled to achieve both the openness and information density we wanted in Ice Cream Sandwich,” whereas Roboto was said to avoid some anti-aliasing pitfalls (“gray mush,” as he calls it) at any scale. Google would later open source Roboto in 2015, four years after the release in 4.0.

And one of Android’s defining (and oldest) features saw a thorough refresh in 4.0, too. The aging notification screen is still one of the best implementations available in a mobile platform, but ICS improved it by making individual notifications removable simply by swiping them off the screen. In older versions, your only options were to clear them all — not always the desired behavior — or to acknowledge the notification in question by pressing it, which would usually send you into an application that you may not want to be in.

Google quietly tweaked Android’s soft keyboard in virtually every version since it launched in Cupcake, and ICS was no exception. In fact, it was as big of a leap forward as Gingerbread’s was. The physical design and layout of the keys went largely unchanged, but the correction intelligence driving was overhauled. The platform also got an attractive implementation of inline spellcheck and replacement — not unlike iOS — with red underlining for misspelled words and on-the-spot dictionary adding. For the first time, text entry, clipboard support, and soft keyboard quality felt as though they’re as good as anything on the market.

And that was just the start.

More home screen improvements. ICS’s home screen adopted many of the changes that Honeycomb brought into the fold, but it added a couple of new tricks, too. Folders could be created simply by dragging one icon onto another, at which point, they appeared as a three-dimensional stack of icons rising out of a black circle. The home screen also got a “favorites tray,” which mirrored the configurable dock functionality seen on third-party launchers and some OEM skins. Unlike Froyo and Gingerbread, which had the Phone and Browser apps permanently docked to the bottom of the screen, the favorites tray let the user decide what shortcuts should be there. (The defaults were Phone, People, Messaging, and Browser, but you could have whatever else you liked.)

Android Beam. NFC support was heavily touted with the release of Gingerbread and the Nexus S, but apart from the limited rollout that Google Wallet had seen, there was virtually no practical application to the capability whatsoever. ICS looked to change that with a new feature called Android Beam that allowed two Beam-enabled phones to transfer data just by touching them together, and it was open: developers could extend it and use it however they saw fit.

Face unlock. In addition to the pattern and password locks that were already supported, Android 4.0 added a face unlock that used the phone’s front-facing camera to look for a match. It was arguably more of a novelty than anything else since it could be defeated with a picture of the individual who owned the phone. This concept would go on to be a major part of Apple’s iPhone X in 2017, which arrived with its own Face ID system that uses IR sensors to detect the user’s facial features.

Data usage analysis. Just as Gingerbread improved visibility into battery usage by application, Android 4.0 did the same thing for data usage. You could see overall usage broken down by any time period you liked (and set alerts to prevent overage), but additionally, you could drive down on an application-by-application basis to see what was eating your megabytes.

New calendar and mail apps. The Gmail and traditional email experiences on Android 4.0 were extensively overhauled with new, crisper designs and “action bar” support, which were functionality carried over from Honeycomb. The calendar app got a unified view for the first time, which was convenient for those who used multiple accounts on their device.

Announced at 2012’s Google I/O conference, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was arguably a much bigger deal than its mere 0.1 increment over Ice Cream Sandwich would have you believe. It represented a reboot in Google’s flagging tablet strategy (having been introduced alongside the Asus-sourced Nexus 7) and a big refinement in the completely redesigned user experience that debuted in Android 4.0.

A quick glance at 4.1 — starting with the home screen — didn’t give you much of an indication that anything changed, but a deeper look revealed a host of tweaks and new features. And one of its most important features wass under the hood, away from view: “Project Butter.” Google said that it set out to significantly improve Android’s visual and touch performance with this version by triple-buffering graphics, locking all drawing to a 16-millisecond refresh time, and making a number of tweaks to the touch input subsystem. Since Android’s launch, the platform has always seemed to lag iOS’s touch responsiveness by a hair (particularly when scrolling), and these changes helped close the gap.

4.1: “Jelly Bean”

Of all the user-facing changes, Google Now was undoubtedly the biggest, most important, and most ambitious, and it predated how Google Assistant helps manage your daily tasks today. Google Now sought to do a lot of your day-to-day thinking for you, predicting what you need to know before you ask. Accessed with a screen swipe, Now processed a variety of data — your schedule, location, time of day, and so on — and it presented a series of “cards” that slid into view depending on what it perceived as the most important information at that moment. (It might have given you a drive time home if it detected that you were at your office, for instance.) It also integrated a revamped natural language search function with perhaps the most realistic text-to-speech system ever offered on a phone. With Jelly Bean, voice dictation became available offline for the first time, meaning you didn’t need to be connected to a cellular or Wi-Fi network to use it.

A small selection of 4.1’s other headline features included:

Roboto refresh. Android’s signature font, first seen in Android 4.0, was reworked. New styles and weights were used throughout the UI (italic was seen in Google Now, for instance), and the font rendered a little differently than it did before.

Expandable, “actionable” notifications. Android long had the best and most flexible notification system in the business (with webOS arguably the exception), and Android 4.1 took it to the next level. Developers could create more dynamic notifications that could expand right inside the notification drop-down to reveal more information and controls without opening the app. Notifications could also be toggled off on an app-by-app basis, which was a useful feature first introduced by Apple with the debut of the Notification Center in iOS 5.

Widget flexibility. Resizable home screen widgets first came to the platform in Android 3.1, but Jelly Bean made them more useful. They could be resized dynamically. The task of trying to fit all your widgets and icons on a single panel is a notoriously frustrating one, but widgets adjusted to fit the available space. Icons also moved out of the way to accommodate your drop target, much as they do in iOS.

Predictive text. Google aggressively refreshed Android’s stock keyboard with almost every new version of the platform (an effort that was largely lost because OEMs almost universally chose to replace it with their own), and 4.1 was no different. The focus turned away from word correction and toward word prediction, a capability made famous by the widely popular SwiftKey and adopted by BlackBerry 10: the keyboard attempted to guess the next word that you wanted to write and adapt to your writing style over time.

4.2 “Jelly Bean”

While Android 4.1 Jelly Bean introduced a new confectionary-based name and significant improvements over 4.0, Android 4.2 kept the Jelly Bean moniker and could be looked at as more of a refinement of the platform instead of a major update. Announced just six months after 4.1, 4.2 tightened up performance, introduced improved animations, and offered an even more cohesive design over 4.0 and 4.1. That isn’t to say there weren’t any user-facing additions: Android 4.2 offered a new control panel accessible from the notification shade (via a rather obscure two-finger gesture or a more obvious button), the ability to access widgets and launch the camera right from the lock screen, and the ability to trace words on the stock keyboard a la Swype.

One of the biggest additions to come with 4.2 was Miracast support, which let you wirelessly stream video and audio from your device to a television or other display. Google’s apparent answer to Apple’s AirPlay, Miracast is considered an industry standard, and there are some set-top boxes on the market that support it. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of improvement in Miracast support since Android 4.2 was released in the fall of 2012, and there are relatively few smartphones on the market that take advantage of it, even if they have been updated to Android 4.2. Eventually, this feature would make its way into a standalone hardware called Google Chromecast, a device that continues to be iterated to this day.

Though it wasn’t a software feature, per se, Android 4.2 also saw the release of ”Google Play edition” phones — popular devices from Samsung and HTC that had their custom software stripped and replaced with a “stock” Android experience. For customers who didn’t love the Nexus hardware but still wanted to get Android 4.2 out of the box, the Google Play editions became the best option around.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the other new features introduced with Android 4.2:

Redesigned clock app and clock widgets. One of the biggest visual changes in 4.2 was the new clock app, which featured oddly bolded hours and skinny minutes, as well as quick access to a countdown timer, stopwatch, and world clock. Google also added new analog and digital home screen widgets to the clock app.

Multiple user profiles. Android 4.2 added the ability to have multiple user profiles or accounts on the same Android tablet, letting families easily share the same device. Profiles work very similarly to multiple user accounts in Windows or OS X, and are something that the iPad still doesn’t offer today.

Photospheres. Android 4.2 was the first time that Google introduced Photospheres to the world. A Photosphere is a 360-degree panoramic image that is captured by panning the device around to encapsulate the whole scene. Unfortunately, Photospheres were difficult to share — they can only really be shared through Google’s own Google+ social network — and were not the best at stitching many disparate images together. As a result, they’ve remained a novelty and aren’t something that most users bother with.

Daydream screensavers. As head of Android design, Matias Duarte’s influence on how Android looks and feels is fairly significant, and the Daydream feature in Android 4.2 might be one of the most obvious. Daydream essentially replicates the Exhibition mode that came with webOS 2.0 (Duarte came to Google from Palm, where he led design on webOS), and is a screensaver that can display pictures, images, information, or widgets whenever the phone is plugged in or docked.

Accessibility enhancements. Android 4.2 added a number of improvements for the disabled, with the ability to triple-tap to magnify the entire screen, pan and zoom with two fingers, and speech output and Gesture Mode navigation for blind users.

Though we had been waiting for Android 5 for some time, Google threw us a curveball by once again sticking with Jelly Bean and a point update: Android 4.3 was announced alongside a new Nexus 7 on July 24th, 2013. As you might expect from the small jump in numbers, this update had an equally small jump in features. The most high-profile change to 4.3 was designed specifically with the Nexus 7 (and other Android tablets) in mind: improved multiuser support with restricted profiles, which put the tools were put in place to ensure kids didn’t go crazy with in-app purchases.

Google had begun making a big push for Android gaming earlier in the year, and with 4.3 the company began promoting it in earnest. The new version was the first operating system to support OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics, an advanced software engine for gaming. Apple followed suit with its own OS later in the year, though, and still maintains a significant edge in the gaming ecosystem.

4.3: “Jelly Bean”

Android 4.3 also brought some other minor improvements: TRIM support for improvement memory management, Bluetooth Smart for low-energy accessories, virtual surround sound, a predictive dial pad, and improved Wi-Fi location services.

For Android users, the relatively minor updates in 4.3 may have been blessings in disguise. For one thing, there was less consternation about the inevitable delays that every Android phone faces in getting the latest version of the OS. However, the biggest changes to the experience of using Android over 2013 didn’t come from OS updates, they came from app updates. As Android director of engineering Dave Burke explained to The edge, Google has embarked on a process of modularizing Android. Many core apps like Gmail, Chrome, and Calendar get updated on a regular basis without the need for a giant OS refresh. That means that Android users get the benefits of those improved app right away, instead of having to wait for manufacturers and carriers to go through the long, slow process of customization and approval.

While Android 4.3 might be the pinnacle of Google’s new philosophy of making OS updates more about plumbing than about user-facing features, that doesn’t mean that users aren’t waiting for the next big thing. Google has already teased that the next version is coming — and it has a surprising name.

4.4: “KitKat”

Google released Android 4.4 KitKat in October 2013, coinciding with the launch of the Nexus 5 smartphone. KitKat was the first time that Google has partnered with an outside brand for the Android mascot, and the company launched a massive marketing campaign with Nestle for it. Google would then repeat a similar partnership in 2017 with Android 8.0 Oreo.

Despite being just a point update, 4.4 brought the largest visual change to the platform since the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Google took the visual concepts used in 4.1 and 4.2 and pushed them even further, and modernized the platform in other places as well. The familiar blue accent color seen throughout versions 4.0 to 4.3 was been replaced with white, excising the last remnants of the Tron-inspired aesthetic introduced in Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Additionally, a number of stock apps were redesigned with lighter color schemes.

But the biggest change was found in the home screen: Android 4.4 introduced a transparent notification bar and on-screen buttons; a refined, condensed version of the standard Roboto font; a new app drawer; and most importantly, Google Now integrated directly into the home screen.

In addition to the visual overhaul, Google said its “goal with Android KitKat” was “to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody.” The company focused on making the new OS more efficient, faster, and less resource intensive. This allowed it to run on lower-end and older hardware, encouraging manufacturers to update their existing devices and launch new devices with KitKat instead of resorting to older versions of Android. It was Google’s biggest move yet to end the dreaded version fragmentation that has dogged the platform since its early days.

Here’s a look at some of the top features introduced with Android 4.4:

Google Now in the home screen. The biggest feature for Android 4.4 KitKat was the redesigned launcher, and the star of that show was Google Now. The predictive search service was pulled out of hiding behind a swipe up gesture, giving it prime real estate as the leftmost page of the new launcher. Google Now’s features became more powerful — it coulddirect you to the right app for your search, instead of just launching a web search — and the pervasive search box at the top of every home screen began listening for an “okay Google” voice command at any given time.

New dialer. The dialer was updated to plug into Google’s vast database of businesses and services, letting you search for things right from within the app and get results that might not be in your address book. It was a two-way street, too: if a business called you and you didn’t have its number stored, the dialer automatically identified the caller. In addition to the new searching features, Android 4.4’s dialer had a new, lighter design that better matches the People app.

Full-screen apps. Complementing the new transparent status bar and navigation buttons was the ability for apps to run completely full screen. Apps had the option to hide the status bar and navigation buttons entirely, providing a more immersive experience. The lock screen also offered full-screen album art and cover art for when you are listening to music and playing movies or TV shows on a Chromecast.

Unified Hangouts app. Android 4.4 expanded Google’s Hangouts messaging service with the ability to send and receive SMS messages right from within the app. Though the new features were also available to earlier versions of Android, they made their debut with KitKat and the Nexus 5. The integrated SMS feature wasn’t perfect — Google doesn’t thread SMS messages in the same conversation as Hangouts messages — but was a big step towards Google making Hangouts the focus for all of your messaging activity.

Redesigned Clock and Downloads apps. For the second time since Android 4.2, Google has redesigned the standard clock app in KitKat. The new app offers a more intuitive interface for setting alarms, and does away with the odd bolded hours and thin minutes look of the earlier app. The Downloads app was also been redesigned with a lighter color scheme and more modern look and feel.

Emoji. With Android 4.4, Google finally built colorful emoji characters into the standard keyboard. Other platforms and third-party apps had offered emoji, but users were granted access to the various smiley faces and icons anywhere in the Android operating system.

Productivity enhancements. Google made productivity a big focus in Android 4.4, with a new version of the Quickoffice app and the ability to print to any printer connected to Google Cloud Print. The new Quickoffice gave users access to files stored on cloud services such as Dropbox, Box, and others, in addition to Google Drive. It also received the lighter design treatment, and fits in better with the rest of Google’s existing productivity apps. Google also updated its long-neglected standard email app (not Gmail) with better navigation, nested folders, and other improvements.

HDR+. On devices such as the Nexus 5, Android 4.4 introduced support for HDR+, a new HDR mode that is said to provide sharper images with less noise and greater dynamic range. It still required capturing multiple images and stitching them together, so it didn’t work well with moving subjects, but it was impressive on landscapes and other still-life scenes.

5.0: “Lollipop”

Three years after the release of 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google finally moved forward to the next version of Android with 5.0 Lollipop in November 2014. Lollipop would be the first to introduce a new design language called Material Design that would change the look and feel of apps across Android, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and even stock apps like Dialer and Calendar. This update also brought on Google’s ambitions to expand outside of mobile devices and into wearables, televisions, and even automobiles.

Material Design. Again, the most noticeable change is the introduction of a new design language across Android. Material Design was built on the Cards metaphor first seen in Google Now, establishing a hierarchy of transitions and animations to imitate real life. The colorful interfaces, playful transitions, and animations looked straight out of Disney’s playbook. The Material Design ethos would later be incorporated into Google’s web applications as well, including the desktop interfaces for Google Drive, Google Docs / Sheets / Slides, and Chrome OS.

Multitasking redefined. With Android Lollipop, Google had redesigned how multitasking functions. Rather than simply showing you previews of your recent applications, the new Recents menu let you jump right into the part of the app you’re interested in. This means that tabs in Chrome or documents in Drive will show up as separate preview panes, and developers will be able to tap into the new functionality, too. Apps like Hangouts, Messenger, and WhatsApp can now take advantage of this new view to break conversations into tabs that are accessible from anywhere.

Notifications. Lollipop also saw a big emphasis on the lock screen as the home of notifications in Android. It’s similar to the system already in place in Android 4.4’s notification drawer, but each item is neatly segmented into Cards. The update allowed you to dismiss or deal with notifications straight from the lock screen, with granular controls in place to define which apps can be managed without unlocking your device. There are also new drop-down notifications for when you’re in an app that look like large, floating Cards.

This lock screen notification design would become a large part of how mobile operating systems operate today, emphasizing quick actions like replying to messages or snoozing pings without ever unlocking the device.

Project Volta. Named after Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who invented the battery, Project Volta is a broad set of optimizations and tools that Google says will improve battery life in Android. Battery Historian is a new tool that will give users and developers a greater understanding of how apps are consuming energy, while a new API lets developers make more power-efficient apps by giving control over when background tasks are performed. There’s also a Battery Saver mode coming that Google claims will give users another 90 minutes of usage by switching off all but the most vital functions.

Android everywhere. Google’s dominant mobile OS is no longer just for phones or tablets. Android Wear, an initiative to get the mobile OS onto wearables, was a large focus. Google wants Android on all wearables, whether they’re smartwatches like the Moto 360 or headsets like Google Glass. The first Android Wear smartwatches became available to order through Google Play, with Lollipop enabling functions like unlocking your smartphone without a passcode or pattern if you’re wearing a paired smartwatch. It also integrated Google Fit into the devices, tracking physical fitness activities like walking or biking.

Additionally, Android TV became another attempt to get Google services into your living room. Built on top of Lollipop, Android TV has all the functionality of the company’s Chromecast device, but it pairs that with a more traditional media streaming setup (think Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon’s new Fire TV). Google would later build Android TV into a 4K HDR, Chromecast-like dongle, but so far, it has only released this to developers, not consumers.

Android Auto puts often-used features from smartphones directly into your car. The platform offers calling, texting, navigation, and music, all controlled via a Google Now-style home screen optimized for voice commands or in-car controls. Today, it’s replaced by Google Assistant, the software now found in many of Google’s smart home devices including the Home line of speakers and Home Hub smart display.

There were other smaller announcements with Lollipop, too, such as the ability to run Android apps through Chrome OS and also receive Android notifications directly on your laptop. The message is simple: Google wants Android Lollipop to be the release that takes its dominant mobile operating system and puts it everywhere — your phone, your tablet, your laptop, your TV, your wrist — as the future of Google computing.

6.0: “Marshmallow”

Android Marshmallow was released in October 2015 alongside Google’s Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The update had only a couple truly exciting features, but altogether, the changes represented an important quality-of-life development and an overall maturity of the OS. App permissions offered users more control, the system got smarter about conserving battery, and long-standing pain points like copy and paste were fixed.

It also made Android work a lot more like iOS at a time when the gap between Android phones and iPhones was finally starting to narrow. At long last, their operating systems were starting to move toward each other, with Google adopting some of Apple’s caution and Apple starting to make iOS feel as ambitious as Android. The result was an important update that moved Google’s operating system in a smarter direction as apps, devices, and users began demanding more.

Granular app permissions. Like iOS had long done, Google began allowing users to accept or deny permissions for features like camera or location access on an individual basis, rather than requiring them to accept all or nothing. The transition was slow — developers had to update their apps to support the new scheme — but it was an important move that offered users more control and added safety.

Android Pay. Though not strictly a Marshmallow feature (it hit other Android devices a month before launch), Android Pay was preinstalled on Marshmallow and began allowing users to make payments at supported registers over NFC. Google had been trying to break into mobile payments for a while, and after many failures — and the sheer force of Apple paving the way — Google was finally able to launch a service that worked.

Google fixed copy and paste. Finally. Instead of indecipherable glyphs at the top of the screen, Google borrowed iOS’s approach and made cut and copy options appear directly above what you selected, which is way easier.

Smarter app management. Another meaningful inspiration from iOS came in the form of how Android Marshmallow managed apps. The system began doing a more thorough job of freezing and closing apps lingering in the background using a pair of features called Doze and App Standby. Doze would freeze apps when Android detected that a phone wasn’t in use. And App Standby would block background apps from updating if they hadn’t been opened in some time.

Now on Tap. Now on Tap was Marshmallow’s big new feature, and it was a neat and extremely Google-y one. You held down the home button, and the operating system would automatically scan what was on your screen and pull up relevant information about what it found. It was, in some ways, a precursor to Google Assistant, which would later get this functionality built into it. Now on Tap didn’t always work perfectly, but when it did, it was one of those things that really made a smartphone feel clever.

Fingerprints and USB-C. Neither feature was strictly new to Android devices, but Google helped the them take off by building support directly into the OS, offering a standard way for manufacturers and developers to interact with them.

A smarter app drawer. Instead of flipping through pages of apps, Marshmallow overhauled the app drawer in a few smart ways. First, it sorted the apps in alphabetical order and displayed big letters to help you find what you were looking for. Second, it added a search bar to the top, so you could just type in what you wanted. And third, it added a row of suggested apps to the top, which would go ahead and guess what you were looking for. The guesses got it right… some of the time.

7.0: “Nougat”

Android 7.0 Nougat was officially released on August 22nd, 2016. This update introduced big changes for big phones. The most significant among them was split-screen multitasking, long after Samsung and LG had started building split-screen support into some of their Android devices. Nougat was also the first and only time Google allowed fans to help it name its next version, landing on an official name just a little over a month after crowdsourcing some suggestions.

To this day, version 7.0 remains the most-used version of Android.

Split-screen support. To get two apps running on-screen at once, users could hold down the recents / overview icon and then select a second app to open. But not all popular Android apps immediately supported split-screen, and some of them still don’t to this day.

One of the most useful additions to Android Nougat was a very simple one: quickly double tapping the overview button would hop between the two most recently used apps. This proved even faster than opening the app switcher.

Quick replies get quicker. Nougat also allowed developers to add quick replies directly to their app’s notifications, letting users respond to messages without having to change apps to do so. Google made some changes to the visual style of notifications as well, getting rid of the space between each of them to give the appearance of a single pull-down “sheet.”

With Android Nougat, apps could also bundle several notifications together to cut down on clutter in the notification shade. And users could take control of notifications and change their settings with a long press.

Customizable quick settings. Starting with Nougat, Google put five quick settings icons at the top of the pull-down menu that could be customized — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, do not disturb, data saver, etc. — to a user’s liking. These could be conveniently accessed and toggled on / off with a quick swipe without fully pulling the notification shade all the way down.

Small user-facing updates and bigger ambitions inside. Android Nougat extended the battery-saving Doze optimizations of Marshmallow, which put devices into a deep sleep state when sitting still on a table, for everyday usage. Now, they’d kick in whenever the screen was turned off to extend a phone’s charge.

Underneath the user-facing features, the update had a lot of important improvements like support for the Vulkan API to allow for higher-quality 3D graphics and better games. And Nougat introduced a new approach to future updates, where a phone would download and install a new Android version onto a separate partition in the background. After that, a user would just need to restart their phone to be on the new software right away.

8.0: “Oreo”

As previously mentioned, Oreo would be Google’s second partnership to name its next version of Android after a branded snack. Google would coincide Oreo’s name unveiling with the 2017 solar eclipse, revealing the mascot as a superhero with a cape. By this version, Google Assistant had essentially replaced Google Now as the default virtual assistant. Visually, Oreo also brought one of its most controversial moves yet: the death of the blob emoji.

Notifications are more condensed. Android Oreo proved that the lock screen became essential to the Android experience, with even more organization around how notifications are shown and actionable without unlocking your device. Now, notifications are ordered by what Android perceives to be the priority, such as a pinned music player at the top to let you start, stop, or skip songs. “People to people” alerts, such as text messages or social media notifications, would come next, followed by other notifications like news alerts or app updates.

Oreo also brought a new snoozing feature that lets you swipe away a notification and be reminded at a later time. There are a few UI changes, too, such as notification dots on app icons that let you hold down to see what’s new in that app rather than constantly bombard you on the lock screen. Unlike iOS, however, the dots do not show the number of new notifications, just that there is (at least) one.

RIP blobmoji. Initially unveiled at I/O 2017 without major fanfare, Android 8 Oreo had introduced a new set of emoji that would mark the end of the blob-style emoticons that were first introduced with 4.4 KitKat. The expressive yellow blobs were replaced with a more standard, circular emoji that used gradient colors and bolder lines. Animal emoji were also updated to look slightly more realistic, rather than cartoony. Blobmoji would live on as stickers on Allo, Hangouts, and Gboard.

I’m one with the blob, the blob is me ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ.

Picture-in-picture. Google had teased better multitasking with the introduction of picture-in-picture for Oreo, but the feature was underused upon release as it was limited to specific Google services, such as the paid version of YouTube.

Android TV gets more updates. Prior to Oreo, Android TV had only seen tiny updates, but the new version offered new app channels that displayed live previews of what’s currently playing. A new Watch Now queue also pulled up a list of next episodes in your viewing lineup. Google Assistant was now standard on Android TV running Oreo, rather than an OTA update for those on Nougat and Marshmallow.

Project Treble. Android Oreo brought some significant changes to how the platform was built under the hood in the form of Project Treble. At its simplest, Project Treble separated the Android OS framework from the firmware and other low-level implementations installed by device makers such as Samsung, LG, Huawei, and others. The goal is to make it easier for these companies to issue updates to new versions of Android as they are released and shorten the time it takes to deliver them. So far, results have been mixed. Treble has made it easier for modders and enthusiasts to tweak their devices, but we haven’t seen companies really deliver updates any quicker as a result of it.

9.0: “Pie”

Of the many good P sweets, Google went with Pie for its 10th anniversary in 2018. With it, core functions of the world’s biggest mobile operating system evolved. When Android P debuted at Google’s I/O 2018 developer conference, it was immediately available to test for Google Pixel users. Shortly afterward, Android Pie became the first release that could be tested on non-Google smartphones since the platform first launched. It’s a welcoming sign considering that in 2018, Android again struggles with update fragmentation.

Android Pie is a turning point for the mobile OS. It now has new gesture-based navigation and a dashboard to monitor and limit your “digital wellbeing” or app usage. It also incorporates AI more than ever, using it to drive Android’s UI in the form of Actions and Slices, which predicts the tasks you might want in a certain app then offers an immediate shortcut. Smaller but still useful updates like an improved Do Not Disturb mode, screenshot editing, an early attempt at a “dark mode,” and a Lockdown feature designed to help protect your personal data in case you’re under duress round out version 9’s enhancements.

Gestural Navigation. The big change in Pie is the removal of the three-button navigation setup of past Android builds.

The main navigational screens for Android P can all be accessed with a gesture starting from the “pill” button at the bottom of the screen. A half-swipe up shows the Overview (or recent apps) screen, a full swipe up opens the App Drawer, a tap goes back to the home screen, a long press launches Google Assistant, and a slide to the right quickly switches between recently used apps. Android Pie is also where Google begins to phase out the back button, only allowing it to appear within apps, rather than at all times.

Digital Wellbeing. Google announced its take on monitoring and limiting app usage before Apple did with iOS 12, but as of October 2018, the Android version of the product is still not quite ready. Instead, Digital Wellbeing is being tested publicly as a beta on Pixel and Android One devices — as Google often does — and then it will assume its position within Android Pie at a later date, via an OTA update.

Digital Wellbeing promises to track the notifications you receive, time spent in apps, and how often you check your phone to see what’s going on. Google is being sensitive to conversations in modern society about better time management for digital devices for younger users as well as teens and adults.

Even More AI. Actions and Slices are still in their early stages, which debuted with Android Pie. If you don’t already know, Google really loves artificial intelligence, and this is the way it lives in Pie’s user interface. These deep links into apps are separated into two parts: Actions operate just like those in Google Assistant, while Slices are a new subset that can show the app’s own UI when you type out a global search. They’re handy additions, but they will need the buy-in from developers before they become true time-savers.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on December 7th, 2011, and it has been updated for Android’s 10th anniversary.