Android is an operating system for ‘mobile’ devices. Mobile devices here means any class of device that has a processor with sufficient capacity to run a light weight operating systems. E.g. Mobile Telephone, Net Books etc. Android is promoted by Google.
Android Logo
At the top level, any body can download SDK provided by Android and write applications for Android products in Java language. For E.g. an application to take notes, an address book, a camera application etc. These applications can be published to Android users for free or for a fee through Android Market Place. There are many applications available in Market Place for consumption.
Some of the interesting applications are: one that combines the location information read from your mobile devices GPS module combined with Google Maps to show meta data information on interesting places nearby. Or the one in which you can point your mobile phone camera at the night sky and get information on what constellation you are pointing at and if you are seeing any of the planets.
At a deeper level, each of the user level applications run on JVM ( Java Virtual Machine ). Yes each of the application run on its own JVM called ‘Dalvik‘. Each instance of Dalivk runs in its own thread context. And at the heart of Android is Linux – a customized version suitable for Android application. So Android also has a stripped down version of libC called ‘Bionic‘.
The source code for the Android and along with Java modules can be downloaded and compiled. (Will post about how to do this will follow in days).
T-Mobile G1 (HTC) was the first phone to feature an Android framework. Now almost all major players have at least one model with Android or have plans in pipeline for one.
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