Introduction
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World is contracting with the growth of mobile phone technology. As the number of
users is increasing day by day, facilities are also increasing. Starting with simple
regular handsets which were used just for making phone calls, mobiles have changed
our lives and have become part of it. Now they are not used just for making calls
but they have innumerable uses and can be used as a Camera , Music player, Tablet
PC, T.V. , Web browser etc . And with the new technologies, new software and operating
systems are required.
About Android
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Operating Systems have developed a lot in last 15 years. Starting from black and
white phones to recent smart phones or mini computers, mobile OS has come far away.
Especially for smart phones, Mobile OS has greatly evolved from Palm OS in 1996
to Windows pocket PC in 2000 then to Blackberry OS and Android.
One of the most widely used mobile OS these days is ANDROID. Android is a software
bunch comprising not only operating system but also middleware and key applications.
Android Inc was founded in Palo Alto of California, U.S. by Andy Rubin, Rich miner,
Nick sears and Chris White in 2003. Later Android Inc. was acquired by Google in
2005. After original release there have been number of updates in the original version
of Android.
Features &
Specifications
Android is a powerful Operating System supporting a large number of applications
in Smart Phones. These applications make life more comfortable and advanced for
the users. Hardwares that support Android are mainly based on ARM architecture platform.
Some of the current features and specifications of android are:
Features of Android
OS
Android comes with an Android market which is an online software store. It was developed
by Google. It allows Android users to select, and download applications developed
by third party developers and use them. There are around 2.0 lack+ games, application
and widgets available on the market for users. Android applications are written
in java programming language. Android is available as open source for developers
to develop applications which can be further used for selling in android market.
There are around 200000 applications developed for android with over 3 billion+
downloads. Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as
security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model.
For software development, Android provides Android SDK (Software development kit).
Read more about open source software.
Applications
These are the basics of Android applications:
• Android applications are composed of one or more application components (activities,
services, content providers, and broadcast receivers)
• Each component performs a different role in the overall application behavior,
and each one can be activated individually (even by other applications)
• The manifest file must declare all components in the application and should also
declare all application requirements, such as the minimum version of Android required
and any hardware configurations required
• Non-code application resources (images, strings, layout files, etc.) should include
alternatives for different device configurations (such as different strings for
different languages)
Google, for software development and application development, had launched two competitions
ADC1 and ADC2 for the most innovative applications for Android. It offered prizes
of USD 10 million combined in ADC1 and 2. ADC1 was launched in January 2008 and
ADC 2 was launched in May 2009. These competitions helped Google a lot in making
Android better, more user friendly, advanced and interactive.