ANDROID OS

1. What is Android?

1.1. Android Operation System
Android is an operating system based on Linux with a Java programming interface.
The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) provides all necessary tools to
develop Android applications. This includes a compiler, debugger and a device emulator,
as well as its own virtual machine to run Android programs.
Android is currently primarily developed by Google.
Android allows background processing, provides a rich user interface library, supports 2-
D and 3-D graphics using the OpenGL libraries, access to the file system and provides an
embedded SQLite database.
Android applications consist of different components and can re-use components of other
applications. This leads to the concept of a task in Android; an application can re-use other
Android components to archive a task. For example you can trigger from your application
another another application which has itself registered with the Android system to handle
photos. In this other application you select a photo and return to your application to use
the selected photo.
History of android
Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, United States in October 2003 by Andy
Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications,
Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface
development at WebTV) to develop, in Rubin's words "...smarter mobile devices that are
more aware of its owner's location and preferences." Despite the obvious past
accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly,
revealing only that it was working on software for mobile phones. That same year, Rubin ran
out of money. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an
envelope and refused a stake in the company.
The version history of the Android operating system began with the release of the
Android beta in November 2007. The first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in
September 2008. Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google and the Open
Handset Alliance, and has seen a number of updates to its base operating system since its
original release. These updates typically fix bugs and add new features. Since April 2009,
each Android version has been developed under a codename based on a dessert or
other sweet treat. These versions have been released in alphabetical
order: Cupcake, Donut, clair, Froyo (frozen yogurt), Gingerbread,Honeycomb, Ice Cream
Sandwich, and Jelly Bean. The most recent update to the Android OS was Jelly Bean v4.1,
which was announced in June 2012, and was released into the Android Open Source
Project on July 9, 2012.

2. Basic Android User Interface component
The following gives a short overview of the most important user interface components in
Android.
2.1. Activity
An Activity represents the visual representation of an Android
application. Activities use Views andFragments to create the user interface and to interact
with the user. An Android application can have several Activities.
2.2. Fragments
Fragments are components which run in the context of an Activity. Fragment components
encapsulate application code so that it is easier to reuse it and to support different sized
devices.
Fragments are optional, you can use Views and ViewGroups directly in an Activity but in
professional applications you always use them to allow the reuse of your user interface
components on different sized devices.
2.3. Views and ViewGroups

Views are user interface widgets, e.g. buttons or text fields. The base class for all Views is
theandroid.view.View class. Views have attributes which can be used to configure their
appearance and behavior.
A ViewGroup is responsible for arranging other Views. ViewGroups is also called layout
managers. The base class for these layout managers is the android.view.ViewGroup class
which extends theView class.
2.4. Activities, Fragments and Views
Activities are defined with different layouts. These layouts can be picked based on several
different factoring including the size of the actual device.
The following picture shows an Activity called MainActivity. On a wide screen it shows
two Fragments. On a smaller screen it shows one Fragment and allows that the user
navigate to another Activity calledSecondActivity which displays the second Fragment.




Versions of Android
Version Release date Distribution
4.1.x Jelly Bean July 9, 2012 1.2%
4.0.x Ice Cream
Sandwich
October 19, 2011 20.9%
3.x.x Honeycomb February 22, 2011 2.1%
2.3.x Gingerbread December 6, 2010 57.5%
2.2 Froyo May 20, 2010 14%
2.0, 2.1 Eclair October 26, 2009 3.7%
1.6 Donut September 15, 2009 0.4%
1.5 Cupcake April 30, 2009
0.2%

Android Features:
Android has many amazing and unique features that are of significance to developers and
users alike, some of which are:
Application Framework that enables reuse and replacement of components
Optimized Graphics that is powered by customized 2D graphics library and 3D
graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification
Media Support for common video, audio, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264,
MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
Provision of Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi
SQLite for structured data storage
Open source WebKit engine based integrated web browser
Camera, GPS, Compass, and Accelerometer (dependent on hardware support)
GSM Telephony
Dalvik virtual machine optimised for mobile devices
Rich Development environment that includes a device emulator, debugging tools,
performance and memory profiling and a Eclipse IDE plugin.

Applications
Applications are usually developed in the Java language using the Android Software
Development Kit, but other development tools are available, including a Native Development
Kit for applications or extensions in C or C++, Google App Inventor, a visual environment
for novice programmers and various cross platform mobile web applications frameworks.
Applications can be acquired by end-users either through a store such as Google Play or
the Amazon Appstore, or by downloading and installing the application's APK file from a
third-party site.


Google Play


Google Play is an online software store developed by Google for Android devices. An
application program ("app") called "Play Store" is preinstalled on most Android devices and
allows users to browse and download apps published by third-party developers, hosted on
Google Play. As of June 2012, there were more than 600,000 apps available for Android, and
the estimated number of applications downloaded from the Play Store exceeded 20
billion. The operating system itself is installed on 400 million total devices.
Only devices that comply with Google's compatibility requirements are allowed to preinstall
and access the Play Store. The app filters the list of available applications to those that are
compatible with the user's device, and developers may restrict their applications to particular
carriers or countries for business reasons.
Google offers many free applications in the Play Store including Google Voice, Google
Goggles, Gesture Search, Google Translate, Google Shopper, Listen and My Tracks. In
August 2010, Google launched "Voice Actions for Android", which allows users to search,
write messages, and initiate calls by voice.


Privacy
Android smartphones have the ability to report the location of Wi-Fi access points,
encountered as phone users move around, to build databases containing the physical locations
of hundreds of millions of such access points. These databases form electronic maps to locate
smartphones, allowing them to run apps like Foursquare, Latitude, Places, and to deliver
location-based ads.
Third party monitoring software such as TaintDroid, an academic research-funded project,
can, in some cases, detect when personal information is being sent from applications to
remote servers.
In March 2012, it was revealed that Android Apps can copy photos without explicit user
permission, Google responded they "originally designed the Android photos file system
similar to those of other computing platforms like Windows and Mac OS. [...] we're taking
another look at this
and considering adding a permission for apps to access images. We've always had policies in
place to remove any apps [on Google Play] that improperly access your data."

Security



Android applications run in a sandbox, an isolated area of the operating system that does not
have access to the rest of the system's resources, unless access permissions are granted by the
user when the application is installed. Before installing an application, the Play Store displays
all required permissions. A game may need to enable vibration, for example, but should not
need to read messages or access the phonebook. After reviewing these permissions, the user
can decide whether to install the application. The sandboxing and permissions system
weakens the impact of vulnerabilities and bugs in applications, but developer confusion and
limited documentation has resulted in applications routinely requesting unnecessary
permissions, reducing its effectiveness.The complexity of inter-application communication
implies Android may have opportunities to run unauthorized code.