What Is Android?

What Is Android?

Android was originally created by Andy Rubin as an operating system for mobile
phones, around the dawn of this twenty-first century. In 2005, Google acquired Android
Inc., and made Andy Rubin the Director of Mobile Platforms for Google. Many think the
acquisition was largely in response to the emergence of the Apple iPhone around that
time; however, there were enough other large players, such as Nokia Symbian and
Microsoft Windows Mobile, that it seemed like a salient business decision for Google to
purchase the talent and intellectual property necessary to assert the company into this
emerging space, which has become known as Internet 2.0.
Internet 2.0 allows users of consumer electronics to access content via widely varied
data networks through highly portable consumer electronic devices, such as
smartphones, touchscreen tablets, and e-books, and even through not so portable
devices, such as iTVs, home media centers, and set-top boxes. This puts new media
content such as games, 3D animation, digital video, digital audio, and high-definition
imagery into our lives at every turn. Android is one of the vehicles that digital artists will
leverage to develop media creations that users have never before experienced.
Over the past decade, Android has matured and evolved into an extremely reliable,
bulletproof, embedded operating system platform, having gone from version 1.0 to
stable versions at 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and, recently, 3.0. An embedded operating
system is like having an entire computer on a chip small enough to fit into handheld
consumer electronics, but powerful enough to run applications (commonly known as
apps).
Android has the power of a full-blown computer operating system. It is based on the
Linux open source platform and Oracle’s (formerly Sun Microsystems’s) Java, one of the
world’s most popular programming languages.

NOTE: The term open source refers to software that has often been developed collaboratively by
an open community of individuals, is freely available for commercial use, and comes with all of
the source code so that it can be further modified if necessary. Android is open source, though
Google develops it internally before releasing the source code; from that point on, it is freely
available for commercial use.

It is not uncommon for an Android product to have a 1GHz processor and 1GB of fast,
computer-grade DDR2 memory. This rivals desktop computers of just a few years ago
and netbooks that are still currently available. You will see a further convergence of
handheld operating systems and desktop operating systems as time goes on. Some
examples are the Windows Mobile 7 and iPhone 4 mobile platforms.
Once it became evident that Android and open source were forces to be reckoned with,
a number of major companies—including HTC, Samsung, LG Electronics, and T-
Mobile—formed and joined the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). This was done in order to
put some momentum behind Google’s open source Android platform, and it worked.
Today, more brand manufacturers use Android as an operating system on their
consumer electronic devices than any other operating system.
This development of the OHA is a major benefit to Android developers. Android allows
developers to create their applications in a single environment, and support by the OHA
lets developers deliver their content across dozens of major branded manufacturer’s
products, as well as across several different types of consumer electronic devices:
smartphones, iTV sets, e-book readers, home media centers, set-top boxes, and
touchscreen tablets. Exciting possibilities—to say the least.
So, Android is a seasoned operating system that has become one of the biggest players
in computing today, and with Google behind it. Android uses freely available open
source technologies such as Linux and Java, and standards such as XML, to provide a
content and application delivery platform to developers as well as the world’s largest
consumer electronics manufacturers. Can you spell O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-T-Y? I sure can
... it’s spelled ANDROID.