Android overview

Android overview

What is Android?

Android is an open source, Linux-based mobile device operating system, such as smartphones and tablets. Android was developed by the Open Phone Alliance, led by Google and other companies.

Android provides a unified approach to application development, which means that developers only need to develop for Android so that their applications can run on different Android-powered mobile devices.

Google released its first beta version of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) in 2007 and its first commercial version, Android 1.0, in September 2008.

On June 27, 2012, at Google I/O, Google announced the release of Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean is a progressive update in terms of functionality and performance, with the primary goal of improving the user interface.

Android source code is based on free and open source software licenses. Most of the code released by Google follows Apache License 2.0, and changes to the Linux kernel follow GNU General Public License Version 2.

Android development benefits

• Open source
• Numerous developers and powerful communities
• Growing market
• International app integration
• Low development costs
• A higher chance of success
• A rich development environment

Android features

Android is a powerful operating system that competes with Apple 4GS and supports some great features. Some of the features are listed below:

Android app

Android applications typically use the Android Software Development Kit and are developed in the Java language.

Once developed, Android apps can be easily packaged and sold on stores such as Google Play and Amazon.

Android has millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around the world. T his is the largest installation foundation for any mobile platform and rapid growth. More than 1 million new Android devices are activated worldwide every day.

The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you how to develop and package Android apps. We'll start with the Android app programming environment settings, and then dive into every aspect of Android application development.

The category of the Android app

There are many Android apps on the market. The main categories are:

The history of Android

Android's code names now go from A to L, namely Aestro, Blender, Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwitch, Jelly Bean, KitKat and Lollipop. Let's look at the history of Android in order.

• Cupcakes
• Donuts (Donut)
• Lightning Puff (Eclair)
• Frozen Yogurt (Froyo)
• Gingerbread
• Honeycomb
• Ice Cream Sandwich
• Jelly Beans (Jelly Bean)
• KitKat
• Lollipop (Lollipop)

What is an API level?

The API level is an integer used to uniquely identify the API framework version, provided by a version of the Android platform.