Are you crazy for Smart Phones having android as an Operating System. Firstly, You have to know about what are smart phones.
Smart Phones In general, a smartphone will be based on an operating system that allows it to run applications. Apple's iPhone runs the iPhone OS, and BlackBerry smartphones run the BlackBerry OS. Other devices run Google's Android OS, HP's web OS, and Microsoft's Windows Phone.
A smartphone, or smart phone, is
a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capability and
connectivity than a feature phone.
Devices that combined telephony and computing
were conceptualized as early as 1973, and were offered for sale beginning in
1994. The term "smartphone," however, did not appear until 1997,
when Ericsson described its GS 88 "Penelope" concept as
a Smart Phone.
Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. The unveiling of the Android distribution on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the OpenHandset Alliance, a consortium of 47 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software and open source license. Android was first released with the new launch of HTC Hero.
October 2003 Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White.
First Android Device was launched in 23 September 2008.
Do u know how many companies in the world are providing Android just look this on a single picture.
Why use Android ??
Due to various types of special features android becomes so powerful. Android has various types of features in it. There are some of the features we are going to describe are :
1... Its Architecture
Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack
I will explain all of the captions later in detail which are showing in this image.
SEE Android Architecture full description.
2... System Libraries
Android includes a set of C/C++ libraries used by various components of the Android system. These capabilities are exposed to developers through the Android application framework. Some of the core libraries are listed below:
• System
C library - a BSD-derived implementation of the standard C system library (libc),
tuned for embedded Linux-based devices.
• Media
Libraries - based on PacketVideo's OpenCORE; the libraries support playback
and recording of many popular audio and video formats, as well as static image
files,
including
MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, and PNG.
• Surface
Manager - manages access to the display subsystem and seamlessly composites
2D and 3D graphic layers from multiple applications.
3... Security features
Mobile operating
systems pre-installed on all currently sold smart phones need to meet different
criteria than desktop and server operating systems, both in functionality and
security. Mobile platforms often contain strongly interconnected, small and
less-well controlled applications from various single developers, whereas
desktop and server platforms obtain largely independent software from trusted
sources. Also, users typically have full access to administrative functions on
non-mobile platforms. Mobile platforms, however, restrict administrative
control through users. As a consequence, different approaches are deployed by
the Android platform to maintain security.
Every app that you install on your device needs
to specifically ask you for permission to perform certain tasks. This is done
when you install the app. What this means in practical terms is that apps have
limited abilities. Unless an app has asked for permission to send an SMS, for
example, it can’t.Many
apps which contain malware ask for permission to send SMS messages. The app is asking as
it wants to send a text message to a premium rate number. Android has these
permissions built-in but it is up to the user to notice what permissions an app
wants and grant them if the app can be trusted.
3.2 Android makes malware less potent
In addition to using new services to help prevent malware, we designed Android
from the beginning to make mobile malware less disruptive. In the PC model,
malware has more potential to misuse your information. We learned from this
approach, designing Android for Internet-connected devices. Some of Android’s
core security features are:
·
Sandboxing: The Android platform uses a technique called “sandboxing” to put virtual
walls between applications and other software on the device. So, if you
download a malicious application, it can't access data on other parts of your
phone and its potential harm is drastically limited.
·
Permissions: Android provides a permission system to help you understand the
capabilities of the apps you install, and manage your own preferences. That
way, if you see a game unnecessarily requests permission to send SMS, for
example, you don’t need to install it.
·
Malware removal: Android is designed to
prevent malware from modifying the platform or hiding from you, so it can be
easily removed if your device is affected. Android Market also has the
capability of remotely removing malware from your phone or tablet, if required.
3.3 Android API Permission Model and Manifest File
On installation, the
user is presented with a dialog listing all permissions requested by the app to
be installed. These permission requests are deļ¬ned in the Manifest File AndroidManifest.xml,
which is obligatory for shipping with every Android app.
A powerful and lightweight relational database engine available to all
applications.
5... Graphics
•
SGL - the underlying 2D graphics engine
•
3D libraries - an implementation based
on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where
available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer.
•
FreeType - bitmap and vector font rendering
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