History of Mobile Software Development
To understand what makes Android so compelling, we must examine how mobile development has evolved and how Android differs from competing platforms.
Way Back When
Remember way back when a phone was just a phone? When we relied on fixed landlines? When we ran for the phone instead of pulling it out of our pocket? When we lost our friends at a crowded ballgame and waited around for hours hoping to reunite? When we forgot the grocery list and had to find a payphone or drive back home again? Those days are long gone.Today, commonplace problems like these are easily solved with a one-button speed dial or a simple text message like “WRU?” or “20?” or “Milk and?”
Our mobile phones keep us safe and connected. Nowadays, we roam around freely,
relying on our phones not only to keep in touch with friends, family, and coworkers, but
also to tell us where to go, what to do, and how to do it. Even the most domestic of
events seem to revolve around my mobile phone.
The Brick
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available cell phone. First
marketed in 1983, it was 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inches in dimension, weighed about 2.5
pounds, and allowed you to talk for a little more than half an hour. It retailed for $3,995,
plus hefty monthly service fees and per-minute charges.
We called it “The Brick,” and the nickname stuck for many of those early mobile
phones we alternatively loved and hated.About the size of a brick, with a battery power
just long enough for half a conversation, these early mobile handsets were mostly seen in
the hands of traveling business execs, security personnel, and the wealthy. First-generation
mobile phones were just too expensive.The service charges alone would bankrupt the
average person, especially when roaming.
Early mobile phones were not particularly full featured. (Although, even the Motorola
DynaTAC, shown in Figure 1.2, had many of the buttons we’ve come to know well,
such as the SEND, END, and CLR buttons.) These early phones did little more than
make and receive calls and, if you were lucky, there was a simple contacts application that
wasn’t impossible to use.
These first-generation mobile phones were designed and developed by the handset
manufacturers. Competition was fierce and trade secrets were closely guarded.
Manufacturers didn’t want to expose the internal workings of their handsets, so they
usually developed the phone software in-house.As a developer, if you weren’t part of this
inner circle, you had no opportunity to write applications for the phones.
It was during this period that we saw the first “time-waster” games begin to appear.
Nokia was famous for putting the 1970s video game Snake on some of its earliest
monochrome phones. Other manufacturers followed, adding games like Pong,Tetris, and
Tic-Tac-Toe.
These early phones were flawed, but they did something important—they changed
the way people thought about communication.As mobile phone prices dropped, batter- ies improved, and reception areas grew, more and more people began carrying these handy devices. Soon mobile phones were more than just a novelty. Customers began pushing for more features and more games. But, there was a prob- lem.The handset manufacturers didn’t have the motivation or the resources to build every application users wanted.They needed some way to provide a portal for entertain- ment and information services without allowing direct access to the handset. And what better way to provide these services than the Internet?
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