Android is an open source and Linux-based Operating System for devices such as smartphone and tablet. Android was developed by the Open Handset Alliance, led by Google, and other companies. The first beta version of the Android Software development Kit (SDK) was released by Google in the year 2007, whereas the first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in the September 2008.
Google publishes most of the code under the Apache License version 2.0 and the rest, Linux kernel changes, under the GNU General Public License version 2. The source code for Android is available under free and open source software licenses.
Features of Android
Android is a powerful Operating System supporting a huge numbers of application in Smart Phones. These application make life more comfortable and advanced for the users. Hardware that support Android are mainly based on ARM architecture platform.
Here are some of the list below:
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Features
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Description
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Beautiful UI
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Android OS basic screen provides a beautiful and intuitive user interface.
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Connectivity
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GSM?EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LTE, NFC and WiMAX
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Storage
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SQLite, a lightweight relational database, is used for data storage purposes.
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Media support
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H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB, AAC, HE-AAC, AAC 5.1, MP3, MIDI, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP
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Messaging
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SMS and MMS
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Web browser
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Based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, coupled with Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine supporting HTML5 and CSS3
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Multi-touch
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Android has native support for multi-touch which was initially made available in handsets such as the HTC hero.
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Multi-tasking
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User can jump from one task to another and same time various application can run simultaneously
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Resizable widgets
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Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.
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Multi-Language
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Support single direction and bi-directional text
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Wi-Fi Direct
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A technology that let apps discover and pair directly, over a high-bandwidth peer-to-peer connection
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Android Beam
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A popular NFC-based technology that let users instantly share, just by touching two NFC-enabled phones together.
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Android Application
Android application are usually developed in the Java language using the Android Software Development Kit.
Android applicants are composed of one or more application components (activities, services, content providers, and broadcast receivers)
Once developed, Android application can be wrapped easily and sold out either through a store such as Google Play or the Amazon Appstore.
Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around the world. It’s the largest installed base of any mobile platform and is growing fast. Every day more than 1 million new Android devices are activated worldwide.
Each component performs a different role in the overall application behavior, and each one can be activated individually
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)