What is Android?
Android is an open source operating system based on Linux with a Java programming interface for mobile devices such as Smartphone (Touch Screen Devices who supports Android OS) as well for Tablets too.
Android was developed by the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which is led by Google. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is consortium of multiple companies like Samsung, Sony, Intel and many more to provide a services and deploy handsets using android platform.
In 2007, Google released a first beta version of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and the first commercial version of Android 1.0 (with name Alpha), was released in September 2008.
In 2012, Google released another version of android, 4.1 Jelly Bean. It’s an incremental update and it improved a lot in terms of user interface, functionality and performance.
In 2014, Google announced another Latest Version, 5.0 Lollipop. In Lollipop version Google completely revamped the UI by using Material Designs, which is good for the User Interface as well for the themes related.
All the source code for Android is available free on Git-Hub, Stack overflow and many more websites. Google publishes most of the code under the Apache License version 2.0.
Android Features
Android is a powerful open source operating system which provides a lot of great features, those are
- It’s an open source and we can customize the OS based on our requirements.
- It support a connectivity for GSM, CDMA, WIFI, NFC, Bluetooth, etc. for telephony or data transfer. It will allow us to make or receive a calls / SMS messages and we can send or retrieve a data across mobile networks
- By using WIFI technology we can pair with other devices using apps
- Android have a multiple APIs to support a location-based services such as GPS
- We can perform all data storage related activities by using light weight database SQLite.
- It have a wide range of media supports like AVI, MKV, FLV, MPEG4 etc. to play or record variety of audio / video and having a different image formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, MP3, etc.
- It has an extensive support for multimedia hardware control to perform playback or recording using camera and microphone
- It has an integrated open source webkit layout based web browser to support HTML5, CSS3
- It supports a multi-tasking, we can move from one task window to another and multiple applications can run simultaneously
- It will give a chance to reuse the application components and the replacement of native applications.
- We can access the hardware components like Camera, GPS, and Accelerometer
- It has a support for 2D/3D Graphics
Android History
Initially Google launched a first version of Android platform on Nov 5, 2007 from that onwards Google released a lot of android versions under a codename based on desserts, such as Apple Pie, Banana Bread, Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Jellybeans, Kitkat, Lollipop, marshmallow, etc. and made a lot of changes and additions to the android platform.
Following table shows the version details of android which is released by Google from 2007 to till date.
| Release Date | Version | API Level | Version Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 23, 2008 | Android 1.0 | 1 | Apple Pie |
| February 9, 2009 | Android 1.1 | 2 | Banana Bread |
| April 30, 2009 | Android 1.5 | 3 | Cupcake |
| September 15, 2009 | Android 1.6 | 4 | Donut |
| October 26, 2009 | Android 2.0 | 5 | Eclair |
| December 3, 2009 | Android 2.0.1 | 6 | |
| January 12, 2009 | Android 2.1 | 7 | |
| May 20, 2010 | Android 2.2 | 8 | Froyo |
| January 18, 2011 | Android 2.2.1 | 8 | |
| January 22, 2011 | Android 2.2.2 | 8 | |
| November 21, 2011 | Android 2.2.3 | 8 | |
| December 6, 2010 | Android 2.3 | 9 | Gingerbread |
| February 9, 2011 | Android 2.3.1 | 9 | |
| July 25, 2011 | Android 2.3.3 | 10 | |
| September 2, 2011 | Android 2.3.4 | 10 | |
| February 22, 2011 | Android 3.0.x | 11 | Honeycomb |
| May 10, 2011 | Android 3.1.x | 12 | |
| July 15, 2011 | Android 3.2.x | 13 | |
| October 18,2011 | Android 4.0 | 14 | Ice Cream Sandwich |
| October 19, 2011 | Android 4.0.1 | 14 | |
| November 28, 2011 | Android 4.0.2 | 14 | |
| December 16, 2011 | Android 4.0.3 | 15 | |
| February 4, 2012 | Android 4.0.4 | 15 | |
| July 9, 2012 | Android 4.1 | 16 | Jelly Bean |
| July 23, 2012 | Android 4.1.1 | 16 | |
| October 9, 2012 | Android 4.1.2 | 16 | |
| November 13, 2012 | Android 4.2 | 17 | |
| November 27, 2012 | Android 4.2.1 | 17 | |
| February 11, 2013 | Android 4.2.2 | 17 | |
| July 24, 2013 | Android 4.3 | 18 | |
| October 31, 2013 | Android 4.4 | 19 | Kitkat |
| June 23, 2014 | Android 4.4.1, 4.4.2, 4.4.3, 4.4.4 | 19 | |
| October 17, 2014 | Android 5.0 | 21 | Lollipop |
| March 09, 2015 | Android 5.1 | 22 | |
| October 5, 2015 | Android 6.0 | 23 | Marshmallow |
| December 7, 2015 | Android 6.0.1 | 23 | |
| August 22, 2016 | Android 7.0 | 24 | Nougat |
| October 4, 2016 | Android 7.1 | 25 | |
| Android 8.0 | 26 | O |
For each version Google has made a lot of changes and introduced lot of new features due to that the usage of android in mobile market increased drastically.
Android OS Market Value
Following is the pictorial representation of using an android in mobile phone market with different versions.
This is how the Google released multiple versions of android operating system and acquired huge mobile phone market share with different versions.
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