International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 11

ISSN: 2321-8169
3722 - 3725

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Overview of Android for User Applications

Ms. N. Usha Rani

Ms. Y. Ramya Krishna

Assistant professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Sri Venkateswara University College of Engineering
Tiruapti, India
e-mail:[email protected]

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Sri Venkateswara University College of Engineering
Tirupati, India
e-mail:[email protected]

Abstract- This paper presents the requirements to develop the applications on the Android Operating System. Mobiles are the hot cakes in nowa-days market. Features of mobile depend on software. As mobiles are the low-powered devices that uses battery to run and it is a rechargeable
one, so the operating system for mobiles has played a crucial role. Necessity for developing applications that could run on mobiles increases at
current days. In order to fulfill that features Google introduced Android. Dalvik Virtual Machine facilitates run time environment. Android
components are necessary to develop the applications. Android operating system first developed by Google later Open Handset Alliance.
Android Operating system provides flexible environment for writing applications in java language. This operating system is free, robust and user
friendly.
Keywords- Android Operating System, Open Handset Alliance, Dalvik Virtual Machine, Android components

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I.

INTRODUCTION

As there are tremendous changes taking place in size ranging

from desktops, personal computers, mobiles, tablets and
smartphones[1]. One of the reasons for these changes is due to
the operating system compatibility and flexibility. Hence
Operating system plays a vital role as it acts like interface
between user and hardware [2].There are several operating
systems such as LINUX, UNIX and WINDOWS [3]. The
word android came into existence after 2005 due to mobile
devices. Now-a-days phones become the essential part of
people as it is providing the peoples communication. All
features that we encounter in desktops, laptops, the same can
see in mobiles as a result it plays an exhaustive role in the
market.
Android is a common source operating system.
Android operating system can run on any mobile device based
on LINUX Kernel 2.6 introduced by Google. Later changes
taken place in Android operating system was developed by
Open Handset Alliance (OHA) [4]. Android is a collection of
software stack, middleware and some key applications.
Android gets fame as a result of providing more opportunities
to developer in order to have their extensions or modifications.
Android history starts from the year 2005.At first Google buys
Android Inc. later in 2007, Open Handset Alliance developed
the Android operating system and released Android SDK 1.0
version in 2008. After 2008 many versions of Android came
into existence [5].
II.

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Linux kernel supports many architectures. Android supports

X86 architecture and ARM [6]. Android architecture is a
layered architecture. Linux Kernel acts as a Hardware
Abstraction Layer (HAL).Each and every android application
contains its own processing environment. Architecture of
Android mainly consists of application layer, application
framework layer, library, runtime and kernel layer which are
shown in the below Figure 1 [7].

Figure 1
1. APPLICATION LAYER:
Application Layer mainly consists of applications. These
applications were developed by manufacturers or user
downloaded applications. These application uses java
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International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 11

ISSN: 2321-8169
3722 - 3725

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
programming languages. For example browser, contacts and
phone etc. Home displays the opening page of the phone
whereas Browser is used for extracting, presenting and
transferring the data. Calendar is used for viewing the dates as
well as other applications such as email, whatsapp.
In order to build the android application, the topmost layer
called Application Layer contains application components
which are listed below [11].
Activity
Service
Broadcast Receiver
Content provider
Activity: Activity is the purpose of User Interaction (UI). A
visible screen in application where an application is seen
called an activity. By using this component User can interact
with application. The first writing class in the any of
application should be extends from Activity class.
An activity represents a single screen with a user interface. For
example, an email application might have one activity that
shows a list of new emails, another activity to compose an
email, and another activity for reading emails. If an application
has more than one activity, then one of them should be marked
as the activity that is presented when the application is
launched.

This layer has all available resources, which is provided by

operating system. It mainly provides the framework needed to
run the uppermost layer called Application Layer.
Activity Manager manages the activity life cycle of
applications.
Suppose to find the current location of device, location
manager framework is required. It provides necessary
information of the location.
Content Provider manages the data sharing between
applications. Other frameworks such as Resource Manager
which manages the various types of resources that helps in
developing Application and Notification manager, Telephony
manager etc.
Third layer consists of Libraries and Android Runtime.
3. LIBRARIES:
To support and execute applications or framework libraries are
needed. This layer contains all libraries like SQLite DB,
OPENGL, SSL and etc.
Lib c: c standard lib.
SSL: Secure Socket Layer
SGL: 2D image engine

Another example, an prescription application where user saw

the list of medicines is one activity, reads the medicines is
another activity, asking question to doctor is another activity.
So the whole application treated as one activity and is written
like this. This can be written as class Myprescription extends
Activity

Open GLES: 3D image engine

Service: Service is component which runs on background and

this component cant provide UI. If application needs
background process then it has to use this component. For
Music player as the user is in another application user can also
do some other task such as playing games. Another example,
when the user is in one application user can also fetches the
data over the network.

Media Framework: Android Multimedia Core part

Broadcast Receiver: Broadcast receiver is the component

which provides System and app level intents to the
application. It will trigger once when it get any intents. When
an application is downloaded it sends a notification as when
the application is downloaded.
Content provider: Content providers are an app component.
By using this, one can access data from other application or
within application. Content provider transfers data from one
application to another application. Data is stored in database.
When user is sending a message, contact number is retrieving
from contacts application.
2. APPLICATION FRAME WORK LAYER:

SQLite: Embedded database

Web Kit: Kernel of web browser
Free Type: Bitmap and Vector

Surface Manager: Manage different Windows different

applications
ANDROID RUNTIME:
Every Android application runs in its own process,
with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik
has been written so that a device can run multiple Virtual
Machines efficiently. The Dalvik Virtual Machine executes
files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is
optimized for minimal memory. It also Provide the
functionality of the JAVA Programming Language. The
Android runtime also provides a set of core libraries which
enable Android application developers to write Android
applications using standard Java programming language.
Core libraries: Some of the core libraries provided by android
android.app
Provides access to the application model and is the major of all
Android applications.
android.content:
It provides access of content, publishing and messaging
between applications and application components.
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_______________________________________________________________________________________

International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 11

ISSN: 2321-8169
3722 - 3725

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Dalvik Virtual Machine (DVM):
DVM stands for Dalvik Virtual Machine. DVM is
similar to Java Virtual Machine. It provides runtime
environment to an android application [8].
4. LINUX KERNEL:
Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system
services such as security, memory management, process
management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also
acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest
of the software stack [9]. Based on Linux version 2.6, the
kernel provides multitasking, core system services such as
memory, process and power management in addition to
providing a network stack and device drivers for hardware
such as the device display, Wi-Fi and audio.
Android Usb driver is needed the driver only if user and want
to connect a Google Android-powered device. Android's
camera HAL connects the higher level camera framework
APIs in android hardware to your underlying camera driver
and hardware. Display driver provides the interaction between
user level and the kernel level. Display driver provides the
interaction between user level and the kernel level. Other
drivers such as power management, keypad driver, shared
memory driver.
Languages used for the Application Layer is the java. Even in
Application Framework language used by this layer is java.
Libraries, Kernel uses C and C++ for their development.

III FEATURES AND VERSIONS OF ANDROID OPERATING

SYSTEM

Most of the android applications are written in java language

but there is an absence of java virtual machine in the platform
instead of that DVM is presented. DVM is specially designed
for android and battery powered mobiles.
Multitasking:
Android supports multi-tasking, which provides flexibility of
running from one application to another or running different
applications simultaneously.
Multi touch:
Android has a native support for multi touch which was first
developed in HTC Hero.
Hardware Support:
Android supports video or still cameras, touchscreens, GPS,
accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, proximity and
pressure sensors, thermometers,
GCM (Google Cloud Messaging):
Google cloud messaging is service that allows one user to send
short message service directly to other users on android
devices.
Bluetooth:
Supports sending file, accessing the phonebook, voice dialing
and sending contacts between phones. Keyboard, mouse and
joystick support is available

Various versions of android operating systems are listed below

along with their versions logo [10].
Alpha
Android 1.0

Beta
Android 1.1

Cupcake
Android 1.5

Donut
Android 1.6

Features: The following are the some of the features

discussed below:
User Interaction:
Android OS provides beautiful, attractive and comfortable
user interaction
Smartphone Layout:
A lightweight relational database so called SQLite is used for
the purpose of storing the data in databases.
Connectivity:
Android supports different connectivity technologies like
Bluetooth, Wi- Fi, and Wi Max.
Messaging:
SMS, MMS and android cloud to device messaging
framework are available in android operating system.
Web browser:
Browser present in android operating system depends on web
kit in mix with Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine supporting

clair
Froyo
Android 2.0
Android 2.1

Android 2.2

Java support:
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IJRITCC | November 2014, Available @ http://www.ijritcc.org

_______________________________________________________________________________________

International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 11

ISSN: 2321-8169
3722 - 3725

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
REFERENCES
[1]

[2]

[3]

Gingerbread
Android 2.3

Ice Cream Sandwich

Android 4.0
[4]

[5]

[6]

Honeycomb
Android 3.0
Android 3.1
Android 3.2

Jelly Bean
Android 4.1
Android 4.2
Android 4.3

[7]

[8]

[9]

Kit Kat
Android 4.4

Lolip
Android 5.0

[10]
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IV CONCLUSION
Due to rapid changes that are taking place in the mobile
market, Android brought a drastic change in todays
environment. Android Operating System mainly provides the
user required technology that is utilization of mobile phones
like a computer with storage, capacity and battery. This paper
presents the architecture of the Android operating system and
also discussed its features and the versions which are used to
develop the applications.

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