Gadgetory

hey guys it's Joe the Android guy with pocketnow.com we've gone through an awful lot of iterations of Android but we're only up to version four 4.0.4 is the latest at least as of this recording but what did it look like in the early days let's take a look at Android version 1.1 so this is Android 1.1 I'm running it in an emulator and it just kind of gives us an idea of what Android was like way way back in the day now most people didn't use this version of Android even early adopters most of us got started with Android version 1.5 which was called cupcake or 1.6 which was called donut this is version 1.1 and I don't know if it had a cute little dessert name I don't know what a and B were if you do please leave that in the comments over pocketnow.com so so we can have some history here we can go ahead and check for some system updates but so you can tell running in an emulator not everything works let's go ahead and head back to the home screen now you'll notice we've got kind of a familiar home screen we've got the notification bar up on top I've got Bluetooth turned on I don't have any cellular connection over here and since I'm running an emulator I don't have a battery it's showing the time which for some reason isn't correct and it doesn't match with the clock widget down here the clock is actually showing the correct time the clock up here in the status bar is not but we'll let that slide let's go ahead and look at how this works notice we've got three panels that we can slide between no more than that no less than that that was the the option we have widgets let me get back over to the home screen they have widgets here's a clock widget here's our Google search widget over on the side and we have application icons like all other versions of Android if we long press on the home screen we're given a menu of things that we can do unlike other versions of Android this is a little bit different from what we can do in in the more recent iterations here we can add applications and shortcuts to the home screen this is different depending on what version of Android you're using in the future we can also add widgets and we can change the wallpaper using the wallpaper picker the main difference between this and current versions all of these are just nested menus inside the list so you can literally look through everything that you can add to the homescreen right on this one window let's go ahead and add a search widget just like that easy enough go ahead and search in here I can type and talk at the same time just like that now I don't have an internet connection so you're not gonna see anything here but you'll notice the browser looks an awful lot alike a lot has changed in the the nuts and bolts of the browser but as far as how things look the menus the the error messages and whatnot all pretty much the same go back home our dialer this may be a throwback some of you might remember seeing this dialer in the early versions the only things that really changed were the the color and kind of the dimensionality of the buttons they became kind of square square with an underline kind of a square with a brace it depended on really your manufacturer as well this could be customized but back in the day it was just a very basic push button we have the call log of course I can't call anyone with the emulator so we don't see a list but a very nice thing to have contacts as well and then favorite contacts let's and that's where this is as well that's a shortcut that takes you into a different area of the same app that's one thing that Android did that was a little bit different you could have multiple different entry points into an application so this would take you into the dialer app and the dialer tab whereas contacts would take you into the dialer app and into the contacts tab a little bit different these days but you get the point Maps can't show you much because there's a problem with my connection but it looks essentially the same we've got the grid we've got the Google logo and come in here to menu and it won't let us do anything because it can't connect so we'll go ahead and go back this was in the days before latitude by the way here's our app drawer you'll notice it does look just like a drawer that you'd pull out of a desk you pull the tab out just clicking on it really you could pull it up or click on it just single tap on it whatever you wanted to do there which was kind of fun and novel we've got our alarm clock app very basic could set repeating alarms change them to whatever calculator was very basic though you did have the advanced panel that you could jump into music even more basic if I go back to the home page here we get sort by artists we could sort by albums we could do an entire song list and if I've got any playlists saved you can do that I don't but that's what it would look like so there's a quick look back at Android version 1.1 so you can compare it to what you have in your pocket today kind of see how far we've come in the few short years since Android was released if you think I missed something in the video that you'd like to call out and share with the rest of the audience please do that over in the comments at pocketnow.com if you like seeing retro videos like this one make sure you give the video a big thumbs up and of course head on over to pocketnow.com for a whole bunch of tips tricks news and editorials about your favorite mobile platform for pocket now I'm Joe Levi