WHAT IS ANDROID?
Android is a Linux based operating system it is designed primarily for touch screens mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. The operating system has developed a lot in the last 15 years starting from black and white phones to recent smartphones or mini computers. One of the most widely used mobile OS these days is android. The android is software that was founded in Palo Alto of California in 2003.
Android is a powerful operating system and it supports a large number of applications in Smartphones. These applications are more comfortable and advanced for users. The hardware that supports android software is based on the ARM architecture platform. The android is an open-source operating system that means that it’s free and anyone can use it. The android has got millions of apps available that can help you manage your life one or another way and it is available to low cost in the market for that reason android is very popular.
Android development supports the full java programming language. Even other packages that are API and JSE are not supported. The first version 1.0 of the android development kit (SDK) was released in 2008 and the latest updated version is a jelly bean.
Android Architecture:
The android is an operating system and is a stack of software components which is divided into five sections and four main layers that is
- Linux kernel
- Libraries
- Android runtime
- Application Framework
- Applications
Linux Kernel:
At the bottom of the layers is Linux. This provides a level of abstraction between the device hardware and it is the heart of android architecture that exists at the root of android architecture. Also, the kernel handles all the things that Linux is really good at such as networking and a vast array of device drivers, which take the pain out of interfacing to peripheral hardware.Linux kernel is responsible for device drivers, power management, memory management, device management and resource access.
Libraries:
On the top of linux kernel, their are Native libraries such as WebKit, OpenGL, FreeType, SQLite, Media, C runtime library (libc) etc.
The WebKit library is responsible for browser support, SQLite is for database, FreeType for font support, Media for playing and recording audio and video formats.
Android Runtime:
In android runtime, there are core libraries and DVM (Dalvik Virtual Machine) which is responsible to run android application. DVM is like JVM but it is optimized for mobile devices. It consumes less memory and provides fast performance.
Application framework:
The application framework layer provides many higher-level services to applications such as windows manager, view system, package manager, resource manager, etc. The application developers are allowed to make use of these services in their application.
Applications:
Features:
- Headset layout
- Storage
- Connectivity: GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, Bluetooth, WI-FI, EDGE,3G,NFC, LTE,GPS.
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, C2DM (could to device messaging), GCM (Google could messaging)
- Multilanguage support
- Multi-touch
- Video calling
- Screen capture
- External storage
- Streaming media support
- Optimized graphics
