Android's first release

Android’s first release was in 2007-2008. At the time when smartphones haven’t yet became a thing. There were a bit of signs of phones with advanced pc-like features, but there wasn’t a simple way to build apps for them.

That’s where google came into play. He took the lead in development of operating system for mobile phones. But the journey wasn’t without it’s bumps.

You see android was always advertised as free, open source and inclusive. Somewhere in late 2007 just as first version of Android was about to be released, it came to developer’s attention that some people already had an early access to android’s SDK. Naturally, by being first to get it, it gave them a competitive advantage over other developers. There is no need to say that it was a mini scandal. Their release simply had that preferential vibe. The fact that something like that came from google, a company always proud of it’s openness and equality was even more scandalous.

Even though the initial 1.0 release was a bit bumpy, Android eventually turned out to be a google’s success story. Lucky for us, this kind of google’s preferential behavior is a thing of past. These days android is truly inclusive, and we take pride in a fact that everybody gets access to a latest SDK at the same time. It’s an open field and equal opportunity for us all. Everyone has a fair chance of being first to the market and capturing that glorified monopoly as a reward.

These days we take pride on running on all devices, supporting everyone, the lousiest as well as the best hardware there is. We take pride in having the best technology, in being open source and having that maker mentality. If today, you were to build a hardware mobile phone you would pick android as your os.

Did you know

Android’s logo isn’t actually called Android, Google internally called him Bugdroid.
Older Android versions, with the exception of Android 1.0 & 1.1, are named alphabetically and after desserts. Google also made a sculpture of each version and keeps it in its headquarters. The naming changed after version 10 and these days its just incremental numbers

From all the mobile devices 70-85% of them are running Android or some fork of it. That fact makes knowledge of android OS a very desirable skill. In fact whether you are developing android apps using kotlin, java or some cross OS technologies like react native, your skill-set is currently in very high demand. Android is currently the main operating system of mobile phones as well as market leader in smart televisions area. Android is basically a monopoly.

There are currently 27 million android apps in google play. With new ones being added on a daily if not hourly basis. It is an interesting fact that Android OS was being used even by some of the NASA devices operating in space.

About Illustration

For this t-shirt we wanted to play a bit with design. We wanted to make it obvious that our tee is about android but at the same time we wanted a text that isn’t self explanatory to non android developers. That is why we’ve went with “tap seven times”. Non android developers usually don’t know that is the way you unlock developer mode.

We’ve wanted to symbolize android. As you might know name for android OS was inspired by human to robot fusion. That is the reason we’ve drawn exactly that. Usually android characters are drawn as having robotic arm or robotic head, or some little bits and pieces of mechanics popping out of skin. Well we’ve went with one half being drawn as human and another half being drawn as robot as a symbol of what happens when you tap 7 times. Your transition from regular user to a android developer.

You might notice how our hero is meditating to unlock his powers. Each one of the orbs around him symbolize a tap required to unlock developer mode. He has truly unlocked his superpowers. That is what we think of developers, we think they are humans with superpowers.