What is Android? Developer Applications Guide

How to develop Android applications ? First You need What is Android?

Google’s Andy Rubin describes Android as: 

The first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices, all of the software to run a mobile phone but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

What I need For developing Android Application? 

To develop Android applications  you needs the following thing :

First of All , you must Know  a Few  about Android operating system which is based on Linux with a Java programming interface.   [ So You must Know Java Programming To write the Android App] .

All Android applications written in Java and converted to the Dalvik executable .dex

Second : you need (Android SDK)  Software Development Kit  .

The SDK provides all necessary tools to develop Android applications also The Android SDK provides you the API libraries  and developer tools necessary to build, test, and debug apps for Android.

We will discuss all tools later step by step which we needed to develop application , but now just keep in mind you need know Java [ if you not java developer , don't worry about it ] and install The SDK .

Features of Android

Storage

Uses SQLite, a lightweight relational database, for data storage

Connectivity

Supports GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth includes A2DP and AVRCP, WiFi, LTE, and WiMAX

Messaging

Supports both SMS and MMS

Web browser

Based on the open-source WebKit, together with Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine

Media support

Includes support for the following media: H.263, H.264 (in 3GP or MP4

Container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC (in

MP4 or 3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and

BMP)

Hardware support

Accelerometer Sensor, Camera, Digital Compass, Proximity Sensor, and GPS

Multi-touch

Supports multi-touch screens

Multitasking

Supports multi-tasking applications

Flash support

Android 2.3 supports Flash 10.1

Tethering

Supports sharing of Internet connections as a wired/wireless hotspot

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.  On the other word the Android system will create a unique user and group ID for every Android application. Each application file is private to this generated user, e.g. other applications cannot access these files. 

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.

The Android market

Google Play - Android Market  .

Google offers the Google Play service in which programmers (Android Developer) can offer their Android application to Android users. Google phones include the Google Play application which allows to install applications.

Google Play also offers an update service, e.g. if a programmer (Android Developer) uploads a new version of his application to Google Play, this service will notify existing users that an update is available and allow to install it. 

Other Feature For Android Market

- Google Market - Part of GMS Apps .

- 3party apps submitted to Google, approved and distributed through the market.

- Both Free and Paid apps.

- Apps now limited to 50 MB; updates possible through Market Monetization through ads available.

- Available in many countries, not all countries have support for paid apps.

- Other Marketplace applications available – Amazon has announced its own Android Marketplace.

- App searches filtered based on Manifest file - eg. if a device does not have trackball, apps using trackball will be filtered out.

- Every app publishes a list of components the app will access and permissions need to be granted before installation.  

- Apps installed on device and SD card - SD Card from Froyo.

Future possibilities :

- Google Android Sales to Overtake iPhone in 2012

- The OHA is committed to making their vision a reality: to deploy the Android platform for every mobile operator, handset manufacturers and developers to build innovative devices

- Intel doesn’t want to lose ownership of the notebook market, so they need to prepare for anything, including Android

- Fujitsu launched an initiative to offer consulting and engineering expertise to help run Android on embedded hardware, which aside from cell phones, mobile internet devices, and portable media players, could include GPS devices, thin-client computers and set-top boxes.

- More Android devices are coming and some will push the envelope even further .