Android Version1.6 "Donut"

1.6 "Donut"

Though it wasn't as big of an upgrade as Cupcake, Android 1.6 Donut was still a far bigger deal than its "0.1" increment would let on. It made another pass of minor visual refinements throughout the platform and added a handful of new and updated, but much of the big news was under the hood. CDMA support was first offered in Donut, for instance, opening the door to American carriers like Verizon and potentially hundreds of millions of subscribers across Asia.

But perhaps none of the "under the hood" changes had a more profound effect on the platform than resolution independence. Donut marked the first time that Android was capable of running on a variety of screen resolutions and aspect ratios, which opened the door for phones that featured displays of something other than 320 x 480 in a portrait orientation. If you look at any carrier's Android lineup today, you're liable to see phones of QVGA, HVGA, WVGA, FWVGA, qHD, and 720p resolution — and maybe even a portrait QWERTY model or two — and that scaling capability traces its roots directly to 1.6.

Donut also introduced the notion of the Quick Search Box, a concept more generally known in the mobile world as "universal search." Prior to Donut, pressing the Search button on an Android phone's keypad while on the home screen would take you to a Google search box for searching the internet, no different than navigating to google.com and typing your search there. With Donut's enhancements, you could search a variety of local content — applications, contacts, and so on — plus the internet all at once from a single box. What's more, Donut exposed functions for developers that allowed them to plug in so that their applications could be searched as well.

What other features debuted in Android 1.6? A redesigned Android Market — designed in the white and green accents so closely associated with Android's mascot — included some additional curation to expose lists of top free and paid apps, particularly important at a time when the platform's third-party app catalog was starting to explode. A redesigned camera interface was also included with better gallery integration and significantly reduced shutter lag, although it didn't garner any more critical acclaim than the one it replaced; Google would continue to make small changes to it through 2.3, though most users would never see it since manufacturers typically replaced it in their skins.