A small point before we get to our actual thing. Just like it takes a few hits and misses to develop a perfect script or painting or even an official company logo, every creative endeavor is an ugly duckling before it reaches the swansong form .
Dan Morill , a developer who worked on the Android design way back in 2007, shared an interesting snippet about the "green guy" we all believed was the real official mascot for the OS. He starts off by giving the real credit for the currently popular logo, dubbed as "Bugdroid" by the insiders, to his fellow designer Irina Blok.
In his Google+ post, Morrill says that he designed the predecessor of the current mascot, in as many as four different colors, that were nicknamed "Dandroids" by the team. In the spirit of things, he indulges in some well intended fun by commenting on how "the professional work is of vastly higher quality than the amateur".
And that's not all. The original launch of Android was tagged as "R2-D2" i.e "Release to Developers 2". Eventually the robot naming scheme was abandoned as they call were fittingly trademarked already. Just imagine how dour would have been the Android names if not for Ryan Gibson's quirky "confections scheme" idea. "Cupcake" was to be the public name of Android 1.5. Following this, since April 2009 each of the releases was launched into the market with a codename in alphabetical order.
To hint at some valuable stats, almost 10% of all Android devices now run on the Jelly Bean version , yet the older OS also remain on devices that have not been upgraded still.
Here's is a list of all the Android versions till date with their sweet names based on their API levels:
Android 1.1 Petit Four
Android 1.5 Cupcake
Android 1.6 Donut
Android 2.0 Eclair
Android 2.2.x Froyo
Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
We thank Morill for his interesting revelation. No doubt the Google team happily released its vintage collection to rekindle some memories. It certainly breaks some ice for those who thought that designing and web developing was an all too serious business. These guys have fun too!
Sweet tooth or not, readers do tell us what's your pick from the Android versions and we don't suggest you do the picking by your favorite dessert. There's no brownie points for that! Leave your comments for us in the section below.
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