By now there is a good chance you have heard of Android. The mobile operating system that is pushing Apple to the brink of insanity. But that’s a good thing, right?

Android will be found on almost 100 phones by the end of 2010. It was created by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google with the goal of keeping mobile devices open for development. The software has been available as open source since October of 2008.

The first phone to run Android was the HTC Dream and ran version 1.0. The phone is also known as the Google Phone or G1.

The first official software release was made available in May of 2009 and it’s name was Cupcake (1.5). Cupcake’s Platform Highlights include various user interface refinements and key feature updates. After 1.5 came, you guessed it, 1.6 – Donut.  In October 2009, only five months after a major Android update, Donut was released. The update was minor, but still brought some key enhancements to the mobile operating system. In January of 2010, Android released 2.0/2.1 (Eclair) which added some additional features. Again, this upgrade was minor, but needed to fix bugs and upgrade the API. Are you noticing a pattern here? Android puts out updates fast and they name them after food.

The latest Android SDK release was 2.2 (Froyo). The SDK was made available to developers in May of 2010. Although Google is calling the software release minor, few people see it as such. Some of the key features that I am looking forward to: tethering, mobile hot spots, the Davik Performance boost, and many others.

From what I can tell Android is going to continue to put out updates at least once per year. And if you were following along, Android released four updates in the past year. That’s pretty incredible.