Android is a Linux based operating system it is designed primarily for touch screens mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. The operating system has developed a lot in the last 15 years starting from black and white phones to recent smartphones or mini computers. One of the most widely used mobile OS these days is android. The android is software that was founded in Palo Alto of California in 2003.
The android is a powerful operating system and it supports a large number of applications in Smartphones. These applications are more comfortable and advanced for the users. The hardware that supports android software is based on ARM architecture platform. The android is an open-source operating system that means that it’s free and anyone can use it. The android has got millions of apps available that can help you manage your life one or other way and it is available to low cost in the market at that reasons android is very popular.
The android development supports the full java programming language. Even other packages that are API and JSE are not supported. The first version 1.0 of the android development kit (SDK) was released in 2008 and the latest updated version is the jelly bean.
The android is an operating system and is a stack of software components which is divided into five sections and four main layers that is
The android uses the powerful Linux kernel and it supports a wide range of hardware drivers. The kernel is the heart of the operating system that manages input and output requests from the software. This provides basic system functionalities like process management, memory management, device management like camera, keypad, display etc the kernel handles all the things. Linux is really good at networking and it is not necessary to interface it to the peripheral hardware. The kernel itself does not interact directly with the user but rather interacts with the shell and other programs as well as with the hardware devices on the system.
The on top of a Linux kennel there is a set of libraries including open-source web browser such as WebKit, library libc. These libraries are used to play and record audio and video. The SQLite is a database that is useful for the storage and sharing of application data. The SSL libraries are responsible for internet security etc.
The android runtime provides a key component called Dalvik Virtual Machine which is a kind of java virtual machine. It is specially designed and optimized for android. The Dalvik VM is the process virtual machine in the android operating system. It is a software that runs apps on android devices.
The Dalvik VM makes use of Linux core features like memory management and multithreading which is in a java language. The Dalvik VM enables every Android application to run it own process. The Dalvik VM executes the files in the .dex format.
The application framework layer provides many higher-level services to applications such as windows manager, view system, package manager, resource manager, etc. The application developers are allowed to make use of these services in their application.
