Summing up Android for 2010 -January 17th

By Bhavya Siddappa

So how was the year 2010 for Android ? Here is my summary for the key ingredients.

January:

Year started off with the release of Android SDK 2.1.

Google launched its first phone Nexus One on 2.1 running Flash 10.1.

Motorola Backflip with Yahoo as a default search page, LG GT450 Android Phones got launched.

20,000 units of Nexus1 were sold out in the opening week.

February:

With the introduction of live wallpapers in Éclair version, users started enjoying richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on their home screen.

There were many edge cases in the service lifecycle that made it very easy to accidentally leave a service running; new APIs in 2.0 make this much easier to deal with.

Android SDK introduced a new UI for end users to monitor and manage the running services on their device.

March;

With the help of Voice-enabled keyboard feature in 2.1, one could dictate message instead of typing it.

Android NDK r3 version released .

Google Labs released Gesture Search App for Android.

April:

Google started working on Android Tablet.

Google confirmed Android 2.1 downgrades Image Quality 2.0.

Android twitter app from Google was made available in the app store, this app brought in an evolving Android UI design patterns.

May:

Google Developers day – Google I/O was hosted and it got an awesome response and support, for the first time the keynotes were live streamed.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) was introduced with features: Cloud to Device Messaging, Dalvik JIT etc.

Through the new app market feature, users could report bug and developers were able to receive crash and freeze reports from their users.

Google Latitude API were made public.

June:

Android 2.2 SDK and NDK R4 both were available for download.

An application which violations Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy or any malicious application that poses a threat, Google developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices.

Logitech brought Android iPhone apps for Google TV.

This was beyond imagination, but it came true: iPhone 3G was running Android 2.2.

French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers started enjoying using Google Voice Searchl

July:

As android 2.2 supports application installation on SD card, this gave users room for many more apps, and benefits to apps from games categories.

Swype came to Android virtual keyboard.

Android Market welcomed Korea.

Google announced the release simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications. At run time, application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.

August:

It was interesting to see new players like Spice Mobility, Dell, Micromax launching Android devices

Samsung Galaxy S got launched, which till today is sold like hot cake.

Google Android overtook Windows Mobile.

September:

Android 2.2 started to see wide adoption.

2007 when Google announced Android, Andy Rubin said “We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android.” But at this stage was growing beyond phones to new kinds of devices.

Samsung Galaxy Tab was announced and it was said to be a wake-up call for Android developers. It was scary for the developers as they had never seen a screen like this on an Android device before.

Launched Voice-Action in the new Google Voice Search for Android — an awesome new way to search faster.

Developers from 20 more countries were now able to sell paid apps on Android Market.

18 additional countries were now able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

October:

There was lot of buzz happening around about Google TV and Galaxy Tab.

Android was quickly moving to hardware that are increasingly different from the smartphone devices, having lack of features like GPS, accelerometers, and video cameras

Google announced the mobile editing capabilities for Google docs on Android and iPad

Adobe AIR 2.5 cross platform runtime environment for android released.

November:

Showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This provided users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them.

U.S Military people favored Android and they all owned an Android phone.

Google Map 4.6 with new features in its Location Based Services was released for Android.

December:

Google with partnership of Samsung launched Nexus S with 2.3 android sdk with support for NFC.

Google Map 5.0 was released which was faster, supported offline & in 3D look.

Android Market Client Update; more payment options in Android market.

Skyfire the popular mobile browser released 3.0.1 for Android.

Google launched a new eBook store to read digital books optimized for Android devices running 2.1. Andy Rubin confirms Google activating 300,000 Android devices per day

Conclusion:

When Google launched the Nexus One, they thought this would be the flagship mobile device for their new Android operating system. The Nexus One served as the blueprint for Android devices, which exploded across most major mobile carriers. With their open approach and flexibility in what carriers and manufacturers can do with the OS, Android’s numbers grew. Android began to surpass the iPhone

As android became more popular, there was talk of fragmentation of the app ecosystem and the operating system itself. With frequent updates from Google, but carriers dragging their feet on sending updates to their customers, the problem seemed serious for developers and Android fans. Fragmentation may soon become less of an issue as more handsets are updated to the latest Android OS, but it’s still wait and watch.