Without a lot of fanfare or hoopla, Google quietly celebrated the 7th birthday of Android. On September 23, 2008, Android 1.0 made its debut with T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream making it commercially available for the first time. To celebrate the release of the mobile operating system 7 years ago, Google has released 3 celebratory wallpapers which you can download for your device. All three feature a sweets-and-treats them, as you would expect, and come in a shade of blue, white and black backgrounds.
The announcement of the wallpapers came via the Google Store’s Google+ account yesterday and the three wallpapers can be found directly at that link. I have also added them to my wallpaper page so you can download them there too. As with all new wallpapers on my page, they are at the bottom (oldest at the top/newest at the bottom) of the page.
Android Actual Birthday A Source of Confusion
To be fair, there is a lot of confusion on the Interwebs on the exact birthday of Android but it seems to come down to two dates. The first, September 23, 2008 as I mentioned before being the commercially available date. There is also the date of November 5, 2007. That is the day that the beta of Android 1.0 was made available. It seems pretty clear in Google’s mind however that the September 23rd date is the one of record and clearly is the one they are celebrating.
Regardless of which date is accepted, the bottom line is that from 2007 or 2008 to now, the platform has become the dominant global mobile OS player. That has been fueled by the wide range of devices that you can find Android on globally with a wide range of price points to meet any budget. That flexibility and wide range of devices has come at at cost, most notably around security of the platform. Google continues to push hard for OEMs to update their devices quickly for security reasons and Marshmallow goes a long way in improving device security.
Android 7th B-Day
Android 7th B-Day
Android 7th B-Day
