Android: story of a playful robot

On a sunny day in 2010, a six year old daughter along with her mother was in a crowded theater to watch the movie ‘Alice in wonderland’. The opening credits were scrolling down and all of a sudden the movie started with an ‘Android’ logo on the screen. The little one stood up and shouted, “My mom designed that”. Irina Blok blushed and winked with profoundness when everyone around turned to her. 

Android is an operating system that functions on over a billion smartphones making more than 80% mobile users powered across the globe. Either you yourself or someone closest right in your family uses an Android based cellphone or tablet, but do you know the story of this little robot?

Come over, let’s have some Android fun!

 What is this Android all about?

Android’s origin goes back to Andy Rubin during the early years of the current century.

During his childhood in New York, Andy Rubin was interested in any type of gadgets. His father, who was into marketing of various electronic gadgets, became his first mentor for his experiments. After his schooling, Andy persuaded for graduation in computer science from Utica College in New York. While experimenting with gadgets, he developed an intense interest in robots. Post his graduation, Andy started his career as a robotic engineer in Carl Zeiss AG in the year 1986 and later joined Apple Inc. in 1989 and continued till 1992. 

Years passed and Andy consistently  tried his hands on various technologies with different firms. Andy got his mind fixed on creating an Open Source Operating System for mobile devices. {An Open Source software refers to a computer program of which the source code written by the programmers is available to the general public for use or modification without any licence charges. The user can modify the code of  the operating system to make it work suiting own requirement. ‘Linux’ is the best well-known example.} 

In 2003, Andy Rubin founded Android Inc. to develop such a unique operating system for mobiles. The company faced severe financial difficulties during the initial years. Andy had to borrow funds from his friends to function the firm and in 2004, and one of his friends, Steve Perlman did the first seed-funding for Android and company got into a massive action towards it’s unique objective to code an Open Operating System since then. In Andy Rubin’s words their sole aim was “to develop an operating software to create smarter mobile devices those are more aware of its owner’s locations and preferences.”

In 2005, Google Inc. acquired Android for an amount of $ 50 million. This acquisition was with a clear strategy by Google to use the Android technology as a vehicle to penetrate Google’s advanced search engine technologies into the mobile devices. And, Andy Rubin took the charge of the new Google arm in the capacity as the Senior Vice President.

During the first week of November 2007, Google created a historic mile-stone by establishing Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium of mobile handset manufacturers and mobile app makers to develop Open Source Standards for mobile devices. The initial 34 members of OHA consortium included prominent players namely Google, Sony, HTC, Motorola, Intel, Dell, LG, Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile … who in future got into the exclusive usage of Android in their handsets and services. During 2008 October, the Android Open Source Operating System was launched for the mobile device manufacturers and  HTC Dream became the first ever smartphone operated with Android Open Operating System. Adding the spice to the market, Google introduced it’s own mobile phone series in 2010 under the brand ‘Nexus’ operated with Android software and manufactured by other partnering brands viz., LG, Motorola…etc. In short span of time, all the OHA members became the prominent community which started to use and promote the Android Open Source Operating System which was developed under the Linux kernel platform. It’s the history now many more companies joined OHA and the members made the Android holding above 80% user share in the market of mobile phones leaving less than 20% mobile users for the other mobile operating systems such as iOS (iPhone OS), BackBerry and Microsoft. OHA is now a group of 80 mobile and technology companies who well established their objective of accelerating innovation in mobile technology, resulting into advanced and better user experience to mobile users. 

Android flavors

A dozen of versions released in 8 years from 2008 to 2014 shows the the excessive dynamism the brand Android carries in absorbing change and producing rapid revolution in technology. 

Each version of Android was named after a dessert/ sweet with brand names, released in the alphabetical order; Angel Cake, Battenberg, Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat, named after the chocolate brand and the latest Lollipop unveiled in November 2014 and all the sweet titles were promoted with matching icons.

Since the time of introduction Android was on a race of improvisation. The aim is to fix bugs in the earlier version and add new features to create a refreshing user experience for it’s consumers. 

<Logo of the latest version of Android; Lollipop held by Android robot icon 

All about the design and it’s designer

The origin of one of the most playful logos  of the corporate world, the lighthearted robot of Android, has the root at the founder Andy Rubin’s innate attraction towards robots.

The design of the robot is the creation of the Russian origin graphic designer Irina Blok. Irina Blok was born in a family of engineers in Russia. She was migrated to US when she was 18 and aspired to become a creative designer. For the past 15 years, she has been working for numerous big brands like Apple, Yahoo, Google and of course Android. In 2008, while Google was getting ready to launch Android platform for mobile devices, they asked Blok and her team to invent a creative logo with a fresh new look for their software. They wanted something from which the people can identify their product. Blok was also told to engage a robot in the motif. Finally, she had created incredible 26 cute little robotic logos. The selected logo is established through its presentation in a fresh green shade, that infuse life into the logo. And the presentation of the trademark word ‘Android’ was created by Ascender Corporation from Chicago, which is a digital typeface foundry engaged in developing fonts. The font/ typeface used to present the Android trademark is named as ‘Norad’.

Adding more fun, the Android Inc. made their logo open sourced just like their software. The most alluring part of this logo design is making it open sourced, this means anyone can customize the logo and enjoy creating their own robot from it.

With the advancing technology, enriching features and enlarging user-base across the world, the playful robot will certainly hold the ground to it’s advantage for the years to come.

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