Android’s mascot, affectionately known as Bugdroid, has become instantly recognizable in the mobile world and it has already gone several transformations to match the dessert a given Android version is named after. But Bugdroid wasn’t the first mascot.
These loopy-looking robots were. They were created by Dan Morrill, who worked in developer relations, when he decided that slides for a presentation to Google’s dev team needed eye candy.
These were never used officially, but apparently they lived long enough to pick up a nickname – Dandroids.
While the Dandroids are not without their charms, I have to say I’m glad Google went with the Bugdroid design (done by Irina Blok).
Mr. Morrill isn’t done with the Android trivia. The second internal developer launch of Android was called R2-D2, short for Release To Developers 2. Due to trademark considerations, Android’s naming scheme moved on to desserts – an idea by Ryan PC Gibson.
Dan Morrill
Jan 2, 2013 - Public
I am Ozydandius of Droid. Look on my works, ye mighty, and LOL. (This one goes out to my #Android homepersons, mostly. +1 this post if you remember these.)
In the before time, in the long long ago (which is to say, 2007), Android had not yet launched; publicly, it was all rumors. We were working harder than you could possibly imagine on the initial announcement on 5 November and the SDK launch a week later.
My job was developer relations, but I took a much-needed break of a couple hours and spent some quality time with Inkscape to create these... things.
See, we were prepping for an internal developer launch (meaning, we were going to ask Googlers to start fooling with the APIs and give us early feedback), and I had no eye candy for the slides we were putting together. Hence these guys.
They had a brief flurry of minor popularity amongst the team -- enough to pick up the nickname "Dandroids", anyway. But then +Irina Blok (as I recall) presented her work: the bugdroid we all know and love. Funny how the professional work is of vastly higher quality than the amateur, isn't it?Even so, these guys have the distinction of being the first proposed mascots for Android (that I'm aware of, at least.)
Anyway, I am doing some spring cleaning on the ole NAS server, and dug these guys up. I figured I'd share them so you can experience a thrill of terror at what might have been, and thank your local patron deity for Irina's incredible home run.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112413860260589530492/posts/WrBh6fsChfH
http://blog.gsmarena.com/heres-the-...w-the-dessert-based-naming-scheme-came-to-be/