MAD Chapter 1 Notes
MAD Chapter 1 Notes
MAD Chapter 1 Notes
What is Android ?
Android is an open source and Linux-based Operating System for mobile
devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Android was developed by
the Open Handset Alliance, led by Google, and other companies.
The first beta version of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) was
released by Google in 2007 where as the first commercial version, Android 1.0,
was released in September 2008.
There are many android applications in the market. The top categories are:
o Entertainment
o Tools
o Communication
o Productivity
o Personalization
o Music and Audio
o Social
o Media and Video
o Travel and Local etc
The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a business alliance that was created for
the purpose of developing open mobile device standards. The OHA has
approximately 80 member companies, including HTC, Dell, Intel, Motorola,
Qualcomm and Google. The OHA's main product is the Android platform - the
world's most popular smartphone platform.
OHA member companies back the open platform concept for a number of
reasons, as follows:
1. Android User
2. Developer
3. Equipment Maker
Smart TV: An Android TV box is a small computer that plugs into any TV and
gives the user the ability to stream content, locally and online. Apps can be
downloaded from the Google Play Store, installed, and do most anything a
standard computer can do from streaming videos to writing an email.
Smart Speakers: Smark speakers are booming in the market now, Smark
speakers like Google Home, Alexa, We can control our android device via voice
using these smart speakers.
Android Features
Resizable Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more
widgets content or shrink them to save space
Multi-touch Android has native support for multi-touch which was initially
made available in handsets such as the HTC Hero
Wi-Fi A technology that lets apps discover and pair directly, over a
high-bandwidth peer-to-peer connection.
Android Architecture
Applications
Application Framework
Android Runtime
Platform Libraries
Linux Kernel
Applications –
Application runtime –
The Platform Libraries includes various C/C++ core libraries and Java based
libraries such as Media, Graphics, Surface Manager, OpenGL etc. to provide a
support for android development.
Media library provides support to play and record an audio and video
formats.
Surface manager responsible for managing access to the display subsystem.
SGL and OpenGL both cross-language, cross-platform application program
interface (API) are used for 2D and 3D computer graphics.
SQLite provides database support and FreeType provides font support.
Web-Kit This open source web browser engine provides all the
functionality to display web content and to simplify page loading.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is security technology to establish an
encrypted link between a web server and a web browser.
Linux Kernel –
Linux Kernel is heart of the android architecture. It manages all the available
drivers such as display drivers, camera drivers, Bluetooth drivers, audio
drivers, memory drivers, etc. which are required during the runtime.
The Linux Kernel will provide an abstraction layer between the device
hardware and the other components of android architecture. It is responsible
for management of memory, power, devices etc.
Security: The Linux kernel handles the security between the application and
the system.
Memory Management: It efficiently handles the memory management
thereby providing the freedom to develop our apps.
Process Management: It manages the process well, allocates resources to
processes whenever they need them.
Network Stack: It effectively handles the network communication.
Driver Model: It ensures that the application works properly on the device
and hardware manufacturers responsible for building their drivers into the
Linux build.