You've seen the Android mascot dress up in a gingerbread disguise, don an ice cream sandwich suit, and show off a belly fully of jelly beans, but you've never seen him like this.
Before the familiar green guy made his debut, there was actually a different species of Android mascot. Meet the Dandroids.
Googler Dan Morrill, who worked in Android developer relations when the mobile operating system was being readied for primetime, drew the colorful bots back in 2007 to add a little "eye candy" to an presentation he was putting together for an internal developer launch. In a Google+ post Friday, Morris explained that the characters enjoyed "a brief flurry of minor popularity amongst the team," before being replaced by the sweet treat-loving Android mascot we all know and love today.
The current Android mascot, known as Bugdroid, was created by designer Irina Blok. While the friendly Dandroids didn't survive the test of time, they remain the "first proposed mascots for Android," according to Morrill.
As another interesting side note, Morrill revealed that we all might have been referring to different Android versions by the names of famous robots instead of tasty desserts. An early internal developer launch version of Android was dubbed "R2-D2," which stood for Release to Developers 2. Google eventually abandoned robots as the Android naming scheme, since most are trademarked.
These days, meanwhile, more than 10 percent of Android devices are running the latest version of Google's operating system, Jelly Bean. Most Android gadgets, however, are still running the search giant's much earlier OS known as Gingerbread.