ANDROID

http://eglobiotraining.com/android

an·droid http://eglobiotraining.com/android(in science fiction) A robot with a human appearance.

What is android? http://eglobiotraining.com/android it is a mobile operating system developed by Google. It is used by several smart phones, such as the Motorola Droid, the Samsung Galaxy, and Google's own Nexus One.

Where is android based? http://eglobiotraining.com/androidThe Android operating system (OS) is

based on the open Linux kernel. Unlike the I Phone OS, Android is open source, meaning developers can modify and customize the OS for each phone. Therefore, different Android-based phones may have different graphical user interfaces GUIs even though they use the same OS.

ANDROIDhttp://eglobiotraining.com/androidAndroid phones typically come with several

built-in applications and also support third-party programs. Developers can create programs for Android using the free Android SDK (Software Developer Kit). Android programs are written in Java and run through Google's "Davlik" virtual machine, which is optimized for mobile devices. Users can download Android "apps" from the online Android Market.

ANDROID http://eglobiotraining.com/androidSince several manufacturers make Android-

based phones, it is not always easy to tell if a phone is running the Android operating system. If you are unsure what operating system a phone uses, you can often find the system information by selecting "About" in the Settings menu. The name "Android" comes from the term android, which refers to a robot designed to look and act like a human.

ANDROID HISTORY http://eglobiotraining.com/androidLiterally, it means "manlike," deriving from the

Greek word for "man" and an ending that means "like" or "similar to".

In common parlance, it's come to refer primarily to artificial beings that are manlike in form. (Natural creatures that are vaguely manlike... such as gorillas... are instead referred to as "anthropoid", which derives from the same root and literally speaking means essentially the same thing.) 

Android http://eglobiotraining.com/androidAuthors who want to be specific that the creatures in question

have female rather than male forms occasionally use the term "gynoid," but this is relatively uncommon. 

In science fiction, using the term "android" often implies the artificial being in question is biological in nature (as opposed to a mechanical "robot"). However, this isn't always observed (the original robots in the play Rossum's Universal Robots seem to have been biological, and Marvin the Paranoid Android in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is pretty clearly intended to be mechanical, as are the "droids" in Star Wars).

It's is also a computer system, such as the Android phones and software.

GOOGLE ANDROID OS http://eglobiotraining.com/androidGoogle’s Android operating system has undergone

a pretty incredible metamorphosis in the three short years since it debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Think about it: three years, eight major releases. Eight. To put that in perspective, there have only been ten major consumer-grade releases of Windows (give or take, depending on how you count) in over twenty-five years of retail availability. You could make a pretty convincing argument that no consumer technology in history has evolved as quickly as the smart phone, and Android has been at the very center of that evolution.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN? The Android era officially began on October

22nd, 2008, when the T-Mobile G1 launched in the United States. Initially, many features that we couldn't live without today were missing — an on-screen keyboard, multi-touch capability, and paid apps, for instance — but the foundation was in place, and a few lasting trademarks of the platform debuted on those very first G1s to roll off the assembly line:

The pull-down notification window. Though these early phones clearly weren't

without their flaws, it was almost universally acknowledged that Android nailed the notification system on day one — it would take iOS another three years before launching a design as effective at triaging messages and alerts coming from users' ever-growing collection of mobile apps. The secret was in the G1's unique status bar, which could be dragged downward to reveal every notification in a single list: text messages, voicemails, alarms, and so on. The fundamental concept lives on (in a refined form) even in version 4.0 today.

The Android Market http://eglobiotraining.com/android.It's hard to imagine a smart phone without a

centralized app store now, but when Android first shipped, it did so at the very start of the mobile app revolution. Indeed, the Android Market on those first G1s bore little resemblance to the Android Market of today: it launched with just a handful of apps (as you'd expect of an entirely new ecosystem), and didn't have the rich, multifaceted curation that has been added over the last couple versions — instead, it just had a single row of handpicked selections at the top of the app's home screen. Perhaps more importantly, it lacked support for any sort of payment system, a problem that wouldn't get fixed until the following year.

Dessert is served: 1.5 "Cupcake"

Android 1.5 — perhaps better known by its codename, Cupcake — marked much more of a milestone. It wasn't just about the fact that it added several hotly-anticipated features that were critical to keeping the platform competitive, it was also the first version to use Google's "sweet" naming convention: every major release since Cupcake has been named after a confection in alphabetical order. Apart from a couple tricky letters like "X," we'd expect the trend to continue for a while.

1.6 "Donut"

Though it wasn't as big of an upgrade as Cupcake, Android 1.6 Donut was still a far bigger deal than its "0.1" increment would let on. It made another pass of minor visual refinements throughout the platform and added a handful of new and updated, but much of the big news was under the hood. CDMA support was first offered in Donut, for instance, opening the door to American carriers like Verizon and potentially hundreds of millions of subscribers across Asia.

2.0 / 2.1 "Eclair"

In early November of 2009 — about a year after the G1's premiere — Android 2.0 launched right on Donut's heels. "Big" would be an accurate description all around: it was a big deal, made big promises, and was deployed on big phones offered by big carriers. Eclair, as it was known, was initially offered exclusively on Verizon on none other than the Motorola Droid — the phone that kicked off one of the most successful mobile franchises in history.

2.2 "Froyo"

Android 2.2 was released in mid-2010, and the advantage of the Nexus program was starting to become clear: the Nexus One was the first to get updated. What did Google have to showcase in Froyo? Plenty. From the first power-on, the redesigned home screen was instantly recognizable: gone was the old three-panel view (which dated back to Android 1.0), replaced by a five-panel one with a new group of dedicated, translucent shortcuts at the bottom for the phone, web browser, and app launcher. Additionally, dots on either side of the shortcuts gave the user an indication of what panel they were currently viewing. In some ways, Google was playing catch-up here — third-party skins like HTC's Sense had already done all of these things.

Respectfully submitted to

Prof. Erwin M. Globio, MSIT