It’s amazing how far smartphone technology has come in just 4 years. Nowadays, the latest iteration of Android (4.2.2) has an incredible amount of features including:

1. NFC or Near Field Communication, which allows you to share files simply by putting touching two NFC compatible devices together.
2. HDR Camera mode.
3. Flawless speech to text translation.
4. Google Now, which gives you the right information about anything you want, whenever you need it.

Yet back in 2009, Android developers were excited that at last, Android phones now have a virtual keyboard! With virtual tactile feedback! In addition, the virtual keyboard would correct your misspellings, and suggest words for you to use. Yes, the beginning of autocorrect, thought what’s most noticeably funny in this video is that The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest illegal downloading sites, is one of the search terms that is suggested. Oops. Regardless, while these innovations may seem petty and ancient to our eyes today, back in 2009 this was cutting-edge stuff.

You may not believe, but before this version of Android release, you couldn’t upload, record, or even watch videos on your phone. Gasp! What were people even using their smartphones for?

Another feature presented in this video was the ability to upload a YouTube video while still being able to use your phone however else you wanted. That means you could send at text, make a call, or even watch another YouTube video while your YouTube file was uploaded. We can’t imagine how this would actually work in practice considering how weak devices were back in the day, but then again, most YouTube uploads back in the day were so grainy and compressed that uploading such a file wouldn’t be that processor intensive anyway.

The presenter is also thrilled to show us, that by rotating the phone you can change any app between both a landscape and portrait presentation. Remember when this was the coolest thing ever? I remember some of my early adopter friends wowing me with this feature constantly, but overtime it just became second nature to us, and we get surprised when any phone nowadays doesn’t do it.

Also in this presentation is the introduction of Google search via voice. Meaning, just press a button, say what you want to search for, and Google will search it for you. Voice to text technology has come a long way, but it’s interesting to see that this is was 4 years ago when Google first started implementing this feature.

Last but not least, this version of Android introduced widgets. I still think these features are underused even today, but it’s cool to see how far ahead of the time Google was.

You can watch this video and laugh at how old these features seem. Or you can marvel how far Android has come in just four short years. Who knows what the next four years will bring?