The history of android 5

Android 2.0, Éclair‎—blowing up the GPS industry

Forty-one days—that was how much time passed between Android 1.6 and 2.0. The first big version number bump for Android launched in October 2009 on the Motorola Droid, the first "second generation" Android device. The Droid offered huge hardware upgrades over the G1, starting with the massive (at the time) 3.7 inch, 854×480 LCD. It brought a lot more power, too: a (still single-core) 600Mhz TI OMAP Cortex A8 with 256MB of RAM.

Enlarge / The Motorola Droid stares into your soul.

The most important part of the Droid, though, was the large advertising campaign around it. The Droid was the flagship device for Verizon Wireless in the US, and with that title came a ton of ad money from America's biggest carrier. Verizon licensed the word "droid" from Lucasfilm and started up the "Droid Does" campaign—a shouty,

The history of Android 3

From left to right: Android 0.9’s home screen, add drawer, and shortcut deletion interfaces.

Ron Amadeo

Android 0.9, Beta—hey, this looks familiar!

Six months after Milestone 5, in August 2008, Android 0.9 was released. While the Android 0.5 milestone builds were "early looks," by now 1.0 was only two months away. Thus, Android 0.9 was labeled "beta." On the other side of the aisle, Apple already released its second version of the iPhone—the iPhone 3G—a month prior. The second-gen iPhone brought a second-gen iPhone OS. Apple also launched the App Store and was already taking app submissions. Google had a lot of catching up to do.

Google threw out a lot of the UI introduced in Milestone 5. All the artwork was redone again in full-color, and the white square icon backgrounds were tossed. While still an emulator build, 0.9 offered something that looked familiar when compared to a released version of Android. Android 0.9 had a working desktop-style

The history of Android 2

Left: the Milestone 5 home screen showing the “all" button, two dock icons, and four recent apps. Center: the home screen with the app list open. Right: the power menu.

Ron Amadeo

Android 0.5, Milestone 5—the land of scrapped interfaces

The first major Android change came three months after the first emulator release: the "m5-rc14" build. Released in February 2008, “Milestone 5" dumped the stretched-out BlackBerry interface and went with a totally revamped design—Google's first attempt at a finger-friendly interface.

This build was still identified as "Android 0.5" in the browser user agent string, but Milestone 5 couldn't be more different from the first release of Android. Several core Android features can directly trace their lineage back to this version. The layout and functionality of the notification panel was

The history of Android

 Android's home screen over the years.

Ron Amadeo

Android has been with us in one form or another for more than six years. During that time, we've seen an absolutely breathtaking rate of change unlike any other development cycle that has ever existed. When it came time for Google to dive in to the smartphone wars, the company took its rapid-iteration, Web-style update cycle and applied it to an operating system, and the result has been an onslaught of continual improvement. Lately, Android has even been running on a previously unheard of six-month development cycle, and that's slower than it used to be. For the first year of Android’s commercial existence, Google was putting out a new version every two-and-a-half months.

Lights of the Pharaohs

Electric Lights in Egypt?

by Frank Dörnenburg
It is a widespread belief in alternative science that our forefathers possessed a much greater technological knowledge than our schoolbook science is willing to accept. Many of those theories are lacking serious foundation and are often based on overdrawn speculations [ like the Manna machine ].

In the temple of Hathor at Dendera, several dozens of kilometers
north of Luxor, there are reliefs interpreted by some "experts" as lamps.

But the theory that electricity was known and used in antiquity seems to rest on a much more stable foundation. The key to the whole theory lies a few hundred

Ancient Flying Machines

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Introduction

Flight has been the dream of humankind since they watched in awe as birds soared effortlessly through the sky. But, according to accepted history, it wasn't until the 1780s that two Frenchmen achieved lighter-than-air flight when they were lifted into the air in a hot air balloon near Paris. Then powered, heavier-than-air flight became the goal. And although it was theorized that heavier-than-air flight was possible as early as the 13th century, and in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci designed winged aircraft and a crude kind of helicopter, it wasn't until the Wright brothers made their first successful flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903 that powered flight became a reality.

The Flower of Life

Introduction The "Flower of Life" can be found in all major religions of the world. It contains the patterns of creation as they emerged from the "Great Void". Everything is made from the Creator's thought. After the creation of the Seed of Life the same vortex's motion was continued, creating the next structure known as the Egg of Life. This structure forms the basis for music, as the distances between the spheres is identical to the distances between the tones and the half tones in music. It is also identical to the cellular structure of the third embryonic division (The first cell divides into two cells, then to four cells then to eight). Thus this same structure as it is further developed, creates the human body and all of the energy systems including the ones used to create the Merkaba. If we continue creating more and more spheres we will end up with the structure called the Flower of Life.

The Iron Pillar from Delhi

Standing at the center of the Quwwatul Mosque the Iron Pillar is one of Delhi's most curious structures. Dating back to 4th century A.D., the pillar bears an inscription which states that it was erected as a flagstaff in honour of the Hindu god, Vishnu, and in the memory of the Gupta King Chandragupta II (375-413). How the pillar moved to its present location remains a mystery. The pillar also highlights ancient India's achievements in metallurgy. The pillar is made of 98 per cent wrought iron and has stood 1,600 years without rusting or decomposing.

Lost Ancient Technology of Peru & Bolivia

Contrary to conventional thought, the Inca were not the most technologically advanced culture in the area of modern Peru and Bolivia, but were preceded by the great megalithic builders thousands of years before. — Brien Foerster

Peru

Why are so many ancient stone structures found in Peru, and how were they so precisely made, and when? The conventional academic explanation that the Inca built everything to be found around Cusco and the Sacred Valley of Peru has become a comical farce. The Inca, though an incredibly advanced and sophisticated people did not have the technology to shape hard stone with such accuracy, and even their oral traditions speak of “those who came before.”

One such people were the mysterious Viracochans, thought to be myth, but now turning out to be actual people with amazing technical skill, in some ways surpassing our own. Join with us as we find the answers, and roll back the historical records of humanity…

Stone Monuments Of Peru: Before The Inca…Before The Great Flood?

The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin is reputedly Christ's burial cloth. It has been a religious relic since the Middle Ages. To believers it was divine proof the Christ was resurrected from the grave, to doubters it was evidence of human gullibility and one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of art. No one has been able to prove that it is the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, but its haunting image of a man's wounded body is proof enough for true believers. Click to view entire shroud enlarged (hi-res image).

The mysteries of Linux clustering technology revealed

Examine the different types of Linux clusters and see how the technology has evolved to the point that it can be a valuable asset for businesses.

In the past, the idea of computer clustering technology was isolated to universities and NASA. That was then, and this is now. Thanks to Linux, large-scale clusters that are simple and inexpensive to install are now available to almost every IT shop that wants them. But despite clustering’s expansion into the general IT market, many administrators who are faced with creating a cluster still don’t understand the technology behind this invaluable technology.

The use of tools 4

Kay's flying shuttle: 1733

In 1733 John Kay, son of the owner of a Lancashire woollen factory, patents the first of the devices which revolutionize the textile industry. He has devised a method for the shuttle to be thrown mechanically back and forth across the loom. This greatly speeds up the previous hand process, and it halves the labour force. Where a broad-cloth loom previously required a weaver on each side, it can now be worked by a single operator.

The use of tools 3

Gutenberg and western printing: 1439 - 1457

The name of Gutenberg first appears, in connection with printing, in a law case in Strasbourg in 1439. He is being sued by two of his business partners. Witnesses, asked about Gutenberg's stock, describe a press and a supply of metal type. It sounds as though he is already capable of printing small items of text from movable type, and it seems likely that he must have done so in Strasbourg. But nothing from this period survives.

The use of tools 2

Rotary power: c.200 BC

The turning of a drum by pressure on projecting arms (the principle of the capstan or windlass) is a necessary part of any rotary machine, such as a screw press. The same principle makes it possible to grind corn between millstones. The manual grinding of grain, together with the baking of bread, go back at least 8000 years to settled communities such as Catal Huyuk. Early forms of grinding involve rubbing one hard surface against another by hand (the pestle and mortar is one such method). Rotary mills, turned by slaves or animals, are known from at least the 2nd century BC.

The use of tools

It is a commonplace that humans are distinguished from other creatures by a technological ability, and man has often been described as a tool-using animal. The distinction is not entirely valid. Some animals do use tools. Chimpanzees are the most often quoted example, stripping a twig to plunge it into an anthill and then eating the tasty termites which cling to the end of it. A more modern example of tool-using is that of crows living in a walnut avenue in the Japanese town of Sendai. The walnuts are too hard to crack. So the crows have taken to dropping them on a pedestrian crossing where they are crushed by the passing traffic. When it is the pedestrians' turn, the crows fly in to bear

6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain

#6. The Voynich Manuscript

The Mystery:
The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. And it's not like some idiot just scribbled a bunch of nonsense on paper and went, "Figure THIS out, fuckwads." It is actually an organized book with a consistent script, discernible organization and detailed illustrations.

Computer chip can think like a human brain

IBM has developed a sophisticated new chip that works by simulating the neurons inside the human brain.

The concept of creating a 'thinking' computer has been the dream of computer engineers and futurists for years and while this latest development doesn't quite achieve that goal it does open up the door to a whole new way of performing complex tasks using computers.

The size of a postage stamp, the new chip contains 5.4 billion transistors and is capable of simulating 1 million neurons and 256 million neural connections.

Life found half a mile below Antarctic ice

Researchers in Antarctica have revealed the discovery of a whole ecosystem living beneath the pack ice.

It seems a long time since scientists first started to drill down through the ice to sample the waters of one of Antarctica's many subglacial lakes, bodies of water that have remained completely isolated from the outside world as far as half a mile under the surface where by all rights nothing should be able to survive.

This week however the research team finally confirmed that this cold, dark environment is indeed home to some remarkable forms of life and may offer hope for finding life on other worlds as well.

Where is Genghis Khan buried?

Japan-Mongol Joint Research Team via AP

Genghis Khan united warring tribes in 1206 and became the leader of the Mongols, creating an empire that eventually stretched from China to Hungary. The famed warrior's tomb, however, has remained a mystery ever since his death in 1227.
According to legend, his burial party killed anyone who saw the procession. The slaves and soldiers who attended the funeral were also killed. Horses then trampled evidence of the burial, and a river was diverted to flow over the grave, which is thought to

ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

This curious mechanical device is often described as the World’s first analogue computer was retrieved by sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera in or around 1900AD.  Scientists all agree that it is real and that it dates from some time during the 2nd century BC making it well over 2,000 years old.  It comprises of a complex system of dials, gears and cogs of extraordinary precision. Experts agree that it represents a standard of production that would not be seen again until the rise of complex clocks and clockwork in the 18th century.  After many years of research the current thinking is that it was used as an astronomy calculator to predict and measure the movement and cycle of the planets in relationship to the Sun, Earth and the Moon.  For decades after its original discovery the importance of the find was overlooked until archaeologists and modern scientist began to appreciate the significance of such early mechanical sophistication.  Since then it has been x-rayed many times using evermore advanced equipment.  Working reconstructions have been made and entire research groups established to unlock the secrets of its manufacture and its purpose.  Its existence has challenged many preconceived ideas regarding the technological abilities of the ancient civilisations