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 operating system 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:
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:
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)
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