Android version history

The version history of the Android mobile operating system began with the release of the Android beta in November 2007. The first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in September 2008. Android is under ongoing development by Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and has seen a number of updates to its base operating system since its initial release.

Since April 2009, Android versions have been developed under a codename and released according to alphabetical order: Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0–2.1), Froyo (2.2–2.2.3), Gingerbread (2.3–2.3.7), Honeycomb (3.0–3.2.6), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0–4.0.4), Jelly Bean (4.1–4.3), and KitKat (4.4). On 3 September 2013, Google announced that 1 billion activated devices now use the Android OS worldwide. The most recent major Android update was KitKat 4.4, which was released to commercial devices on 22 November 2013, via an OTA update.

Android alpha
There were at least two internal releases inside Google and the OHA before the Android beta was released in November 2007. For internal milestone in internal releases, names of fictional robots were chosen, with various releases code-named "Astro Boy", "Bender" and "R2-D2". Dan Morrill created some of the first mascot logos, but the current green Android logo was designed by Irina Blok. The project manager, Ryan Gibson, conceived of the confections naming scheme that has been used for the majority of the public releases, starting with Android 1.5.

Android beta
The Android beta was released on 5 November 2007, while the software development kit (SDK) was released on 12 November 2007. The 5 November date is popularly celebrated as Android's "birthday". Public beta versions of the SDK were released in the following order:
 * 16 November 2007: m3-rc22a
 * 14 December 2007: m3-rc37a
 * 13 February 2008: m5-rc14
 * 3 March 2008: m5-rc15
 * 18 August 2008: 0.9
 * 23 September 2008: 1.0-r1

Version history by API level
The following tables show the release dates and key features of all Android OS updates to date, listed chronologically by their official application programming interface (API) levels.

Hardware requirements
Minimum hardware requirements have been upgraded in steps over time, with the new Android versions releases. Original minimums were 32 MB of RAM, 32 MB of Flash memory, and a 200 MHz ARM architecture (ARMv5) processor.

As of version 4.0, a graphics processing unit (GPU) that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware acceleration is mandatory, regardless of applications directly using the OpenGL ES or not.

As of November 2013 and version 4.4, Android requires at least 512 MB of RAM and an ARMv7 processor. MIPS and x86 architectures are also supported. OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware acceleration is still mandatory, while OpenGL ES 3.0 is supported.