What is Android ?

Gadgets have become a part of life. Today arrival, as well as utilization of gadgets, is increasing exponentially. And we people cannot imagine our life without gadgets. Today even kindergarten people were using these mobile phones. Moreover, in this COVID-19 situation, these gadgets were the common medium for communication. Even the primary standard kids were using these smart gadgets for communication. Among those many gadgets that were available in the market, the smartphone is the most commonly utilized gadget among people. In the last decade, the smartphone is a big thing that is utilized by business people. But, in this decade, this has become the most common gadget among people. In most of these gadgets, android is the most commonly utilized operating system. Even there are many other operating systems like ios, Linux, android stands on the top of those operating systems.

Here the surprising thing this platform has arrived after Linux. But this operating system has replaced the Linux. So have your ever think of “ How this operating system has replaced Linux? ” Also “ what makes android so popular? ”. Read the entire article to know the details.

Before going to know the in-depth details, let us have an initial look at its definition

What is Android?

Android is an open-source Linux operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. It is developed by Open Handset Alliance

This platform offers a unified approach to application development for mobile devices. This approach makes the application more capable of running the software on different android devices. This Android platform has been divided into various versions numbers. These versions were nothing but significant changes from one to the other. The initial beta version for this Software development kit (SDK) by released by google in 2007.  And the commercial version Android 1.0 was released in Septemeber 2008.  From then it has been continuously releasing the updates. The latest version of Android is Android Q that is the 10^th version of this operating system. Today most of the gadgets that were released in 2020 works on Android 9 (or)10. And we were going to expect Android 11 in the next year.

Utilization:

Even though this application, arose into the market in recent times, today it has become the dominant mobile cross-platform across the globe. According to the stat counter, android holds over 74% of the global mobile OS market share as of July 2020. This operating system was designed with mobile in mind. The place, where the phone applications and applications live. Today everything you see on your device is a part of the operating system. Moreover, whenever your device gets a call, text message (or) an email the OS processes that information and puts it in a readable format.

Top Android device manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Motorola usually have a skin on the top of the OS. A skin is a custom design that adds extra features to your phone with different icons and tweaks designed to provide a unique to your gadget. The popular skins include Samsung One UI and One Plus. A phone without major customization is generally referred to as a stock android and the phone with minor changes was known as near stock. The hardware that supports this software is based on the ARM architecture platform. Today this platform contains millions of apps available that help you to manage your life one (or) the other way. Android programming supports full java programming.

Do want to know more on this platform, then visit Android Online Training

Since we have gotten the basic idea regarding its utilization, let us have a look at its architecture.

 Architecture:

An android is a software operating system. It contains a stack of software components that is divided into 5 sections and four main layers. They are:

Linux kernel:

Android uses a powerful Linux kernel and supports a wide range of hardware devices. The kernel is the heart of the operating system that manages the input and output requests from the software. It provides basic system functionalities like process management, memory management, and device management like camera, keypad as well as a display to handle all these things. Linux is good at networking and does not require and does require to interface with the peripheral hardware. The kernel itself does not interact directly with the user but interacts with the shell as well as other hardware devices on the system.

Libraries:

These were on the top of the Linux kernel. There is a set of libraries including open web browsers such as WebKit, library libc. These libraries are used to play the audio as well as the video files. The SQL lite is a database that is useful for storage as well as sharing the application data. These SSL libraries are responsible for internet security etc

Runtime:

The runtime provides a  key virtual environment known as Dalvik Virtual Machine. It is a kind of java virtual machine that is specifically designed and optimized for android. The Dalvik VM is a process Virtual machine in Android systems. It is a software that runs the app on android devices. The Dalvik VM makes use of many Linux core features like memory management, multithreading that is in java language. This Dalvik VM enables every application to run its process. This Dalvik VM executes the files in .dex format.

Application Framework:

The application framework layer is capable of providing the higher-level services to applications such as windows manager, view system, package manager, resource manager, etc.  It allows the application developers to make use of there services in their application

Features:

This application framework has a rich set of features. Some of them were :

a)It is an open-source

b)Anyone can customize this application platform

c)Availability of a huge number of applications. Hence the customer can choose the best product as per the need

d)Capable of providing interesting features like Whether details, Opening screen, RSS feeds, etc

e) Has an ability to provide support for the messaging services (SMS and MMS), Web browser, Storage(SQL Lite), Connectivity(GSM, CDMA, Bluetooth, WIFI, media, handset layout.

Hence likewise there are many interesting features of this operating application. You people can get hands-on experience on application development on this platform through Android Online Course.

I hope you people have got enough idea regarding Android. In the upcoming post of this blog, I'll be sharing the details of the runtime environment and the basic program on the android platform. Meanwhile, have a glance at our Android Interview Questions and get ready to crack the interview.