Android Introduction

Android Introduction

What is Android?

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and other open source software and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as Smartphones and tablets. In addition, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars and Wear OS for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are also used on game consoles, digital cameras, PCs and other electronics

Initially developed by Android Inc., which Google bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008. The operating system has since gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 9.0 "Pie", released in August 2018. The core Android source code is known as Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is primarily licensed under the Apache License.

History:

This amazing operating system was by founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Cameras Company diverted its efforts and was pitching Android as a handset operating system that would rival Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile. In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million. Its key employees, including Rubin, Miner, and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition.

At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. In 2007, Google announces the development of Android OS. Android is also associated with a suite of proprietary software developed by Google, including core apps for services such as Gmail and Google Search, as well as the application store and digital distribution platform Google Play, and associated development platform.

The first commercially available Smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23, 2008. On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies including Google, device manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung, wireless carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile, and chipset makers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, unveiled itself, with a goal to develop "the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.

In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices, a line-up in which Google partnered with different device manufacturers to produce new devices and introduce new Android versions. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have incrementally improved the operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases. Google explained that "Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert".

Why Android?

Android is open source operating system which has larger developers community. Android has a higher success ratio and it provides a rich development environment with a good market

Features Of Android:

Sr. No.	Features & description
1	Messaging SMS and MMS are available forms of messaging, including threaded text messaging and Android Cloud To Device Messaging (C2DM) and now enhanced version of C2DM, Android Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is also a part of Android Push Messaging services.
2	Auto Correction and Dictionary Android Operating System has an interesting feature called Auto Correction. When any word is misspelled, then Android recommends the meaningful and correct words matching the words that are available in Dictionary. Users can add, edit and remove words from Dictionary as per their wish
3	Voice-based features Google search through voice has been available
4	Web browser The web browser available in Android is based on the open-source Blink (previously WebKit) layout engine, coupled with Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine
5	Multi-touch Android has native support for multi-touch which was initially made available in handsets such as the HTC Hero.
6	Multitasking The user can jump from one task to another and same time various applications can run simultaneously.
7	Screen capture Android supports capturing a screenshot by pressing the power and home-screen buttons at the same time
8	Accessibility Built-in text-to-speech is provided by Talkback for people with low or no vision. Enhancements for people with hearing difficulties are available, as are other aids.
9	Connectivity Android supports connectivity technologies including GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LTE, NFC, and WiMAX.
10	Hardware Support Android devices can include still/video cameras, touchscreens, GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, barometers, magnetometers, dedicated gaming controls, proximity and pressure sensors, thermometers, accelerated 2D bit blitz(with hardware orientation, scaling, pixel format conversion) and accelerated 3D graphics.
11	Media support   Android supports the following audio/video/still media formats: WebM, H.263, H.264, AAC, HE-AAC (in 3GP or MP4 container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and WebP
12	Storage    SQLite, a lightweight relational database, is used for data storage purposes.

 

Android applications are usually developed in the Java language using the Android Software Development Kit.  On May 2017 Google announced that it will officially support Kotlin on Android as a “first-class” language. Kotlin is a super new programming language built by JetBrains, which also coincidentally develops the JetBrains IDE that Android Studio — Google's official developer tool — is based on. Like Java, which is the default language for Android development, Kotlin is a language that runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), and it's already possible to use Kotlin and many other JVM languages for Android development. Once developed, Android applications can be packaged easily and sold out either through a store such as Google Play, SlideME, Opera Mobile Store, Mobango, F-droid, and the Amazon Appstore.

Please follow given the link to know more about Android’s various versions and their comparison with each other.
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/android-versions-comparison

Thank you so much for reading my first blog on Android. Please comment below down if you like it :-)