What Is Android?

 —Android is a mobile operating system that is based on a modified version of Linux.

 —It was originally developed by a start up of the same name, Android, Inc. In 2005.

 —Google purchased Android and took over its development work.

 —Google wanted Android to be open and free; hence, most of the Android code was released under the open source Apache License.

The main advantage of adopting Android is that it offers a unified approach to application development.

Developers need only develop for Android, and their applications should be able to run on numerous different devices, as long as the devices are powered using Android.

Features of Android

     Because Android is open source and freely available to manufacturers for customization, there are no fixed hardware or software configurations.

 —Storage — Uses SQLite, a lightweight relational database, for data storage.

     Messaging — Supports both SMS and MMS. Chapter 8 discusses messaging in more detail

— Media support — Includes support for the following media: H.263, H.264 (in 3GP or MP4container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC (in MP4 or3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP

     —Hardware support — Accelerometer Sensor, Camera, Digital Compass, Proximity Sensor,and GPS.

—Multi-touch — Supports multi-touch screens.

—Multi-tasking — Supports multi-tasking applications.

—Flash support — Android 2.3 supports Flash 10.1.

—Tethering — Supports sharing of Internet connections as a  wired/wireless hotspot.