Apple might have the brand cachet, but Google gets the sheer firepower. In just some short years, Google's Android mobile platform has overtaken the world wide smartphone market. The first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1, launched with Sept. 23, 2008. It landed more than a year after the first iPhone—and a couple of months after Apple introduced the Request Store and made the iPhone an appropriate smartphone. It's always fun to check back and see how significantly the tech world has changed. But even as recently seeing that 2008, when Android first strike the scene, most consumers still had regular cellular phones instead of smartphones, Palm OPERATING-SYSTEM was still a contender, Research In Motion was using a BlackBerry Curve-fueled and Pearl-fueled upswing, and there was no such thing as a good iPad. Mobile apps had yet to enter the population consciousness. Most phones were both 2G or 3G, not quite a few had GPS yet, and any touchscreen technology phone that wasn't an i phone needed a stylus. The G1 wasn't a wonderful piece of hardware, either. Its 384MHz processor was relatively slow even for your time, and it looked just like a slightly ungainly and unfinished T-Mobile Sidekick, having its oversize, slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as thick, slanted chin. The OPERATING-SYSTEM itself was pretty barren, and looked like a Linux install without any kind of customizations. Still, it had a glass capacitive touchscreen technology and a WebKit browser like the iPhone, and you could heavily customize the house screen. As a result, the G1 still felt more capable as opposed to stylus-based and non-touch smartphones of the day. Our reviewer Sascha Segan called the G1 "a basic introduction to what is seen as a blockbuster mobile platform. " Enter in the Motorola Droid Sascha has been right, of course, but it wasn't immediately obvious at the time. After the G1 came out, we only saw a couple of other Android handsets appear during the period of the next 12 months, leading us to wonder in the event the platform was ever going to generate it for real. Then came the Motorola Droid—the first high-profile Android handset hitting Verizon, complete with a tremendous "Droid Does" marketing strategy and a signature "Droiiid" sound for when new email turned up. It helped that it was also an easy phone and came with cost-free voice navigation, the first handset ever for this. The Droid in fact achieved it for Android; for the first-time, mainstream consumers began to wonder if they should get an iPhone or a Droid. From there, Android popularity surged—and the rest is history. 2010 saw the very first Samsung Galaxy S handsets, while the beginning of 2011 brought the first 4G LTE products running Android, more than a year . 5 ahead of Apple. Screen sizes started to expand further and further. Google tried and didn't sell its own Nexus device, only to resurrect the name in a series of purist phones across multiple suppliers, culminating in the current Samsung Universe Nexus lineup. Then there include the Android tablets. Most weren't achievement stories, and many were completely terrible. But we've seen many bright spots recently, including the particular Kindle Fire HD, the functional Galaxy Note 10. 1, and my personal favorite, the Google Nexus 7, having its smooth, fast performance, bright exhibit, and $200 price tag. We now have even seen the debut involving "phablets, " devices that straddle the particular line between phones and pills, with screens in the low 5-inch range. Two of the most recent Android phones—the LG Optimus G and the Samsung Galaxy Note II—feature quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon as well as Samsung Exynos processors, respectively. Possibly on regular smartphones, screen sizes are pushing up against the 5-inch mark. And we're beginning to quitting pure spec regurgitating, and into genuinely new capabilities like stay zoom during mirrored video playback as well as on-the-fly photo filtering apps. On the top, With Some Stumbles Today, Android sits on the top of the platform heap with smartphone sales, beating its nearest rival (iOS) by roughly two to at least one in the U. S, and with Samsung by far the sales leader. Android phones are great choices for consumers, for enterprises, for getting at the cloud, for enthusiasts hacking emulators as well as installing rogue OS builds—you name it and you will find there's market for it. The most recent OS, Android 4. 1 "Jelly Bean, inches rivals iOS in its smoothness as well as sophistication and beats it with customization options, if not with outright usability, and it's finally starting out appear on a few products, too. To be sure, the OS has brought some hits lately—most notably with Samsung's massive loss to The apple company during last month's patent demo, one of the largest and a lot significant the tech industry has seen in more than a decade. The trick going forward are going to be for phone vendors to identify their devices and software builds, while simultaneously steering clear of existing UI patents but not completely alienating Android purists in the operation. It's a balancing act. Also, Android may have finally lost several of its inherent advantages over iOS with the introduction of the iPhone 5 a week ago, such as 4G LTE service, free voice navigation, and (to a restricted extent) support for larger display sizes. Finally, while Google Play has become stuffed with over half a million third-party apps, nearly all are for phones; there's still a distinct lack of tablet-specific apps in comparison with the iPad. These hurdles can all be overcome, though. There is a vibrant and thriving Android fan and developer community, plus additional choice and fewer restrictions compared to you'll ever see on Apple's side. It's been good to perhaps you have around, Android; here's to swifter performance, even cooler devices, as well as hopefully, fewer lawsuits in the months and years into the future.
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