The world of smartphones wouldn’t be what it is today without two key operating systems: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The first iPhone dropped in 2007 and helped kill off physical QWERTY keyboards as the norm for high-end devices, while introducing a sleek touchscreen interface that looked more like an iPad than a Blackberry phone.
1990-2010
As solid-state computer memory and integrated circuits became cheaper over the years, mobile phones slowly evolved from being just basic communications tools to full-fledged computers. By the end of this decade, mobile networks had evolved to the point where 3G made it possible to access a full Internet on a smartphone, although the cost of data still meant it was only affordable for those willing to pay for it.
By the beginning of this decade, manufacturers were starting to experiment with alternative OS options. The Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick in the US) ran DangerOS, while Motorola’s A760 used a Linux MontaVista distribution and Nokia released its first small Internet tablet, the N770, using its Maemo platform. Later, Maemo was subsumed by Tizen, which has since grown into an entire ecosystem of devices from Samsung, LG, and others.
This August looks busy for Google’s hardware division, with a mainstream Pixel 10 series and two flavours of Pro Pixel plus a foldable for good measure all expected. We expect Google to rely on its strengths here, including superb camera software (Pixels remain the cameras kings) and clean Android updates. Moreover, we expect to see Google’s latest TPU processor powering features like advanced Assistant voice typing and real-time language translation — or even on-device generative AI that can summarize webpages for you or generate image edits with just a prompt.