Jun 30

Android - an introduction

Early this year I broke my old phone. It was an HTC S620 with Windows Mobile on it. As I needed a new phone I looked and asked around what people were buying at that time. A friend of mine already owned a Motorola Milestone (Droid is the international name) and I liked it - a lot. The reason for my liking though was not (only) the fact that the hardware is pretty nice but the operating system it runs: Android. This post is an introduction to what Android is and what it does.

What's the background?

Every consumer electronic device needs an operating system that plays the role of a host for the applications one can run on the phone. For mobile phones there are several operating systems from different vendors:
  • Symbian - a now open source platform for mobile devices
  • Apple iOS4 - the operating system that powers the iPhone
  • Maemo - which is now being transferred to Meego (a cooperation between Nokia and Intel)
  • Android - developed by the Open Handset Alliance
There are more solutions than that, but those are the more important ones - at least for private use cases (BlackBerry is a popular one for business solutions). All of the above named solutions are hardware independent - it is 'just' the basis for the software that is going to run on your mobile device.

What is the operating system for?

So one might ask - what do I need an operating system for and what are differences. The operating system enables one to make use of a computer (mobile devices are computers, too). It handles the use of memory, input, output and takes care of the applications running on the phone. So if you start typing on the keyboard of your mobile device and see the text on the screen it is, because the operating system handles the input and hands the input over to the applications (in this example a text application) for further usage. Another example is playing music files. The music application lets you choose the song, the actual output using the speaker(s) of your phone is handled by the operating system. One could say the operating system does the transformation from in- or ouput using hardware to and from software.

What's special about Android?

With the rise of the Apple iPhone and the usage of touch enabled devices there is more people expect from a mobile phone than it used to be. Being able to call or text someone is not enough anymore. People expect to be twittering and facebooking everywhere they go and so they need a platform that enables them to do so. But that is not all. Functionality is worthless if it doesn't look good. You might have the best software but people won't use it if they don't feel comfortable with it. Due to the iPhone and thanks to Apple's advance on the design of User Interfaces / User Interaction people expect all the functionality being really easy-to-use with no need to read 100+ pages of documentation. Android offers all that. An easy way to use your phone - Android is optimized for touch devices and comes with support for voice controling your phone. It is released as an open source platform and available for free for everyone.
There also is the Android Market which enables the users to easily install new software on their devices. Though it is possible to install software using the Market, you can also do so by downloading an Android application, they come in an .apk format which the phone automagically installs to your device after the download is complete. That is a big difference compared to Apple's approach to distribute applications, the only way to install new software on your phone is to get it using the iTunes Store (no judgement on Apple's policy here). You might have come across a so-called QR Code for Android applications. Using the Barcode Scanner application one can scan the QR Code and start the download of the application - all the required information are supplied by the QR Code.

Who develops Android?

Android is developed by the Open Handset Alliance which was initiated by Google and now has a decent number of members. Applications for Android can developed by every developer - there are no fees for application developers to get started and the SDK can be downloaded for free.

Where to find out more?

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