The Way To Android : Lesson 1

The Way To Android : Lesson 1

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• Agenda :

1 - Introduction

2 - Platform

3 - Software development

Introduction

• What is Android ?

1 - A software platform and operating system for mobile devices

2 - Based on the Linux kernel

3 - Developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance 

       (OHA)

4 - Allows writing managed code in the Java language

5 - Possibility to write applications in other languages and 

      compiling  it to ARM native code (support of Google? No)

6 - Unveiling of the Android platform was announced 

                              on 5 November   2007  with the founding of OHA

• What is the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) ? 

                 1 -  It's a consortium of several companies


                 2 -  Devoted to advanced open standards for mobile devices


                 3 -  Develop technologies that will significantly lower the cost of  
                        developing and distributing mobile devices and services

• Android License

                 1 -  Android is under version 2 of The Apache Software License.
                         http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html 

Platform

• Hardware

 Android is not a single piece of hardware; it's a complete, end-to-end 

 software platform that can be adapted to work on any number of 

 hardware configurations. Everything is there, from the boot loader 

all the way up to the applications.

• Operating System

• Android uses Linux for its device drivers, memory management, process management, and networking.

• The next level up contains the Android native libraries. They are all written in C/C++ internally, but you’ll be calling them through Java interfaces. In this layer you can find the Surface Manager, 2D and 3D graphics, Media codecs, the SQL database (SQLite), and a native web browser engine (WebKit).

• Dalvik Virtual Machine. Dalvik runs dex files, which are coverted at compile time from standard class and jar files. 

• Network Connectivity

• its support wireless communication using :

• GSM mobile-phone technology
• 3G
• 802.11 Wi-Fi network

• Security

• Android is a multi-process system, in which each application (and parts of the system) runs in its own process. Most security between applications and the system is enforced at the process level through standard Linux facilities, such as user and group IDs that are assigned to applications. 

• Additional finer-grained security features are provided through a "permission" mechanism that enforces restrictions on the specific operations that a particular process can perform, and per-URI permissions for granting ad-hoc access to specific pieces of data.

Android Hierarchy 

Software Development

• Development requirements

• Java
• Android SDK
• Eclipse IDE

To Be Continued