What was the first version of Android like to use?

It’s well-known that Apple was the first company to launch an app store, sealing the fate of the proprietary operating systems used by other mobile phone manufacturers.

What’s often forgotten is that Google had been developing a similar platform for years, and was only beaten to market by a few months.

Android was hardly a clone or imitation of iOS, as has been suggested, since its creation happened contemporaneously.

However, the first publicly released Android version was still under development, and it was a further ten months before Android 1.0 was officially marketed.

It lasted for barely four months before a modified version (1.1) was released, and less than three months elapsed before version 1.5 arrived.

A further five months heralded version 1.6, while Android version 2.0 arrived just six weeks later.

That congested timeline might suggest the first version of Android was deeply flawed, with five different incarnations inside a year.

However, iOS also transitioned from version 1.0 to 1.1 within three months, with five minor revisions before it was replaced by iOS 2.0, barely a year after the first version’s debut.

Clearly, these smartphone operating systems were a work in progress. But what was the first version of Android like to use?

First among sequels

Although the initial Android interface looked remarkably like Windows, it successfully introduced features which have largely unaltered ever since.

The Market would be familiar to today’s Play Store customers, the pull-down notification window was a stroke of genius, and home screen widgets remain enduringly popular.

Google already owned Android, so there was integration for key services like Maps, YouTube and Gmail from the outset.

Subsequent revisions of Android 1.0 introduced an on-screen keyboard, video capture and support for varying screen sizes, alongside a home screen Search function.

The system was generally regarded as stable and easy to use – in many cases more so than iOS, which lacked third-party home screen widgets or an effective notification system.

It was quickly rolled out across multiple phone brands, as hardware manufacturers recognised Google’s platform was going to offer more services than their own in-house rivals.

However, Android 1.0 was far from the finished article.

Missing in action

The first version of Android lacked many features which would subsequently become ubiquitous.

These included voice-guided navigation and real-time traffic information, live wallpapers, pinch-to-zoom functionality or the Google Assistant

From an aesthetic perspective, there was no home screen dock, no Flash support, no ability to swipe away apps and no split-screen mode.

It wasn’t USB-C compatible, there was no biometric support, and the app store was pretty sparse by today’s rich standards.

This was also a time when rival operating systems like BlackBerry OS and Nokia’s Symbian were still putting up competition – albeit lacking Android’s choice of apps or aesthetic polish.

Android 1.0 was a brilliantly designed and successfully executed first step into a completely new market.

Tellingly, it still looks good 14 years and 17 versions later.