That’s right, it’s 14 years of the system android between us! We can say that Android has become the biggest step towards the democratization of smartphones in the world.

Apple has played its part in iphone this is iOS, but what she built moved closer and closer to a select group with more purchasing power. However, Android, which is present in most smartphones in the world, has allowed the underprivileged to also become part of this technological evolution.

Over the years, Android has improved to include several features that have helped make life easier for users – some of which have even been copied by iOS. But many of these implementations, which seem so important to us today, were not present at the launch of this operating system.

Let’s point out some features that would have mattered if they were in the first version of the Android system.

Multi-touch support

You can’t enlarge photos or text on an Android 1.0 device.

The details are unclear, but it is believed that between Apple as well as Google so they don’t get in the way. This caused the multi-touch function to stop working for a while. However, Google soon saw that this feature was growing in popularity and implemented it as part of the Android 2.0 platform. It wasn’t until February 2010 that Google gave in to user demands, and multi-touch support was released for the Nexus One line.

on screen keyboard

Android was not originally intended to support a keyboard directly on the screen. For a while, Android devices were considered Blackberry competitors.

What contributed to the introduction of numeric keypads was the release of the iPhone. Therefore, six months later, with the release of Android 1.5 Cupcake, Google added this feature to its users.

Premium apps in the Play Store

The Google Play Store as we know it today was a distant dream. It may not even have been considered at first.

The Android Market—that’s what the Play Store was called when it launched—had only 13 apps, which is pretty bad. The introduction of third-party paid apps, with profit sharing that gives developers 70% of the amount raised, only started in 2009. It was one of the major steps for Android to become home to millions of apps and a marketplace with billions of users.

Widgets and quick menus

Talking about Android without Widgets even seems like a joke. But that was the reality for users of the first version of the operating system. And to think that Apple introduced this feature as recently as iOS 14, and Android users have been using it for years.

This setting, introduced in Android 1.5, is a fundamental part of the Android ecosystem, as is access to quick menus. Swiping down and being able to access features like Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, and Mobile Data are very important for Android users, but they were only implemented in version 4.2 of Jelly Bean.

video capture

In retrospect, it seems logical that the first version of Android did not support video capture. But even so, with so many features present in today’s smartphones, such as 8K video and various software applications that even allow you to record movies with these devices, it’s hard to imagine that this feature was not there in the beginning.

The video capture option only appeared in Android 2.0, whereas in the first version, only still images could be captured.

Android evolution is great! Today, 14 years after its release, we have so many features at our disposal that it is almost impossible for the average user to use them all. And may more innovations come and more decades of existence of this system that has made it possible to popularize smartphones.

Google is already preparing the first Android 14 beta for April 2023
The updated operating system will be called Upside Down Cake

Via: Android Control

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