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Android Development Notes

This document provides an overview of the Android operating system and its history. It discusses that Android is an open source, mobile-specific operating system originally developed in 2003 and later acquired by Google in 2005. It then details some of the major milestones in Android's development, including the first Android device release in 2008, different versions of the OS over time, and how Android continues to expand into new areas like wearables and virtual reality. In closing, it notes that Android is incredibly popular today but that platform fragmentation poses challenges for developers needing to support a wide range of device versions.

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Sujan Neupane
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62 views

Android Development Notes

This document provides an overview of the Android operating system and its history. It discusses that Android is an open source, mobile-specific operating system originally developed in 2003 and later acquired by Google in 2005. It then details some of the major milestones in Android's development, including the first Android device release in 2008, different versions of the OS over time, and how Android continues to expand into new areas like wearables and virtual reality. In closing, it notes that Android is incredibly popular today but that platform fragmentation poses challenges for developers needing to support a wide range of device versions.

Uploaded by

Sujan Neupane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture 1 Introduction

This course focuses on Android Development. But what is Android?

Android is an operating system. That is, it’s software that connects hardware to
software and provides general services. But more than that, it’s a mobile specific
operating system: an OS designed to work on mobile (read: handheld, wearable,
carry-able) devices.

Note that the term “Android” also is used to refer to the “platform” (e.g., devices
that use the OS) as well as the ecosystem that surrounds it. This includes the
device manufacturers who use the platform, and the applications that can be built
and run on this platform. So “Android Development” technically means developing
applications that run on the specific OS, it also gets generalized to refer to
developing any kind of software that interacts with the platform.
1.1 Android History
If you’re going to develop systems for Android, it’s good to have some familiarity
with the platform and its history, if only to give you perspective on how and why
the framework is designed the way it is.

2003: The platform was originally founded by a start-up “Android Inc.” which aimed
to build a mobile OS operating system (similar to what Nokia’s Symbian was doing at
the time)

2005: Android was acquired by Google, who was looking to get into mobile

2007: Google announces the Open Handset Alliance, a group of tech companies working
together to develop “open standards” for mobile platforms. Members included phone
manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, and Sony; mobile carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint,
and NTT DoCoMo; hardware manufacturers like Broadcom and Nvidia; and others. The
Open Handset Alliance now (2017) includes 86 companies.

Note this is the same year the first iPhone came out!
2008: First Android device is released: the HTC Dream (a.k.a. T-Mobile G1)

Specs: 528Mhz ARM chip; 256MB memory; 320x480 resolution capacitive touch; slide-
out keyboard! Author’s opinion: a fun little device.

2010: First Nexus device is released: the Nexus One. These are Google-developed
“flagship” devices, intended to show off the capabilities of the platform.

Specs: 1Ghz Scorpion; 512MB memory; .37" at 480x800 AMOLED capacitive touch.

For comparison, the iPhone 7 Plus (2016) has: 2.34Ghz dual core A10 64bit Fusion;
3GB RAM; 5.5" at 1920x1080 display.
As of 2016, this program has been superceded by the Pixel range of devices.

2014: Android Wear, a version of Android for wearable devices (watches) is


announced.

2016: Daydream, a virtual reality (VR) platform for Android is announced

In short, Google keeps pushing the platform wider so it includes more and more
capabilities.

Today, Android is incredibly popular (to put it mildly). Android is incredibly


popular! (see e.g., here, here, and here)

In any of these analyses there are some questions about what exactly is counted…
but what we care about is that there are a lot of Android devices out there! And
more than that: there are a lot of different devices!
1.1.1 Android Versions
Android has gone through a large number of “versions” since it’s release:

Date Version Nickname API Level


Sep 2008 1.0 Android 1
Apr 2009 1.5 Cupcake 3
Sep 2009 1.6 Donut 4
Oct 2009 2.0 Eclair 5
May 2010 2.2 Froyo 8
Dec 2010 2.3 Gingerbread 9
Feb 2011 3.0 Honeycomb 11
Oct 2011 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich 14
July 2012 4.1 Jelly Bean 16
Oct 2013 4.4 KitKat 19
Nov 2014 5.0 Lollipop 21
Oct 2015 6.0 Marshmallow 23
Aug 2016 7.0 Nougat 24
Mar 2017 O preview Android O Developer Preview
Each different “version” is nicknamed after a dessert, in alphabetica order. But as
developers, what we care about is the API Level, which indicates what different
programming interfaces (classes and methods) are available to use.

You can check out an interactive version of the history through Marshmallow at
https://www.android.com/history/
For current usage breakdown, see https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/
Additionally, Android is an “open source” project released through the “Android
Open Source Project”, or ASOP. You can find the latest version of the operating
system code at https://source.android.com/; it is very worthwhile to actually dig
around in the source code sometimes!

While new versions are released fairly often, this doesn’t mean that all or even
many devices update to the latest version. Instead, users get updated phones
historically by purchasing new devices (every 18m on average in US). Beyond that,
updates—including security updates—have to come through the mobile carriers,
meaning that most devices are never updated beyond the version that they are
purchases with.

This is a problem from a consumer perspective, particularly in terms of security!


There are some efforts on Google’s part to to work around this limitation by moving
more and more platform services out of the base operating system into a separate
“App” called Google Play Services.
But what this means for developers is that you can’t expect devices to be running
the latest version of the operating system—the range of versions you need to
support is much greater than even web development!

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