Today, Android is the world's most pervasive mobile operating system on the planet, powering millions of smartphones, tablets, wearables, and more. But that wasn't always the case, and Android's public life started from humble beginnings just about six years ago.
Each version of Android since 1.5 has been developed with a specific codename. These codenames are chosen alphabetically, and have thus far all been dessert items (or, generically, sweet/sugary foods). Some codenames are associated with more than one version number, while others are limited to only a specific one, and the reason for this inconsistency is not currently known. The naming typically appears to correspond to changes in the developer API levels, but this is not always true (example: 3.0 and 3.1 are both "Honeycomb" but they have different API levels).
The Android of 2008 — what debuted on the first Android smartphone, T-Mobile's G1 aka the HTC Dream — looks almost nothing like the Android we use today. It was slow, clumsy, not particularly intuitive, and frankly, just plain ugly. But Google being Google, the company quickly iterated on Android and issued many numerous updates to add functionality, improve usability, and clean up the appearance of Android over the years.
