It might sound like hyperbole, but Android has been one of the fastest-developed operating systems ever. In just five years, Google managed to push out 19 versions of Android (counting by API levels), and for a good amount of that time, the company averaged a release every two-and-a-half months. With such a rapid development cycle and a lack of a concrete design direction early on, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single part of Android that looked the same from one year to the next.

After doing all the research to make The History of Android possible, we thought it would be enlightening to focus on individual areas of Android and watch them change over the years. So we created this gallery after sifting through hundreds of screenshots.

Many of these early Google apps will never be seen functioning again. They rely on support from Google servers to function, and as the user base of early versions dies off, the server support dies, too. After we took these pictures, support for many of the apps was shut down. Starting them now just produces an error message.

For a more complete look at how Android got where it is today, check out the full History of Android article.



















Ron Amadeo









Listing image by Aurich Lawson