Google Android - A Comprehensive Introduction


  Google Android.pdf (Size: 780.57 KB / Downloads: 6)

Abstract

Google Android, Google’s new product and its first attempt to enter the mobile market,
might have an equal impact on mobile users like Apple’s hyped product, the iPhone.
In this Technical report we are going to present the Google Android platform, what
Android is, describe why it might be considered as a worthy rival to Apple’s iPhone.
We will describe parts of its internals, take a look "under the hood" while explaining
components of the underlying operating system.

Introduction

For some time now, two operating systems for mobile phones have been dominating the
mobile market: Symbian OS and Windows Mobile.
In January 2007 [1], Apple, as third big company to enter the mobile market, introduced
the iPhone running the in-house developed operating system Mac OS X. Leaving
the generation of keypads behing, the iPhone was one of the first phones to offer a
ground-breaking new touchpad interface which works very fast and sensitive. This,
combined with its appearance of both physical device and operating system, resulted in
a big hype for Apple’s new cash cow iPhone. In combination with iPhone market, offering
thousands of applications which can easily be downloaded and installed, iPhone
has become a major success in Apple’s product history.

About Android

Google Android, as the new contestant on the market, gained great popularity after being
first announced in November 2007. With its announcement, it also was accompanied by
the founding of the Open Handset Alliance for which Google Android is said to be the
flagship software. In following chapters, we will take a closer look at Google Android
and describe its parts, functionalities, eventual problems and more. But first, we will
start with a basic understanding of Google Android.

What Is Google Android?

According to the Google Android website [2], Google describes its platform as
a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware
and key applications.
Basically said, Android consists of a UNIX-like operating system based on a 2.6-
series Linux kernel. The operating system has been enriched with all necessary elements
that are required to provide basic functions like a networking stack, GSM/GPRS
abilities, and more. On top of all this, Google offers a framework containing a rich set
of Java methods enabling developers to create a wide range of software for mobile use
on Google Android.
Taking a closer look at the operating system, we are dealing with an ARMarchitecture
based system (armv5tejl) which is quite common for small or handheld
devices. The provided 2.6 kernel (2.6.25-00350-g40fff9a in SDK version 1.0_r1) is
slightly modified - specialized for handheld devices - and offers support for the most
commonly used hardware devices in the embedded field of use (SD-Card, USB, and
more).

What Is the Google Android SDK?

As no officially obtainable physical device is available at time of writing, developers
will have to rely on the provided development kit: Google Android SDK.
A core element of the SDK is the actual Google Android Emulator which provides
a graphical emulation of a possible handheld device running Google Android. Furthermore,
the SDK not only provides the core classes of the Android framework packed into
a Java Jar-file: it also includes the documentation in HTML-form and several tools that
improve the usability and interaction with the emulator.
Once the SDK has been downloaded, developers can directly start creating Androidapplications,
compiling them and deploying them to the emulator. Nothing more than
an editor and a working JDK (Sun JDK) is required.