Android is a mobile operating system (OS) based on the Linux kernel that is currently developed

by Google. With a user interface based ondirect manipulation, Android is designed primarily
for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, with specialized user
interfaces for televisions (Android TV), cars (Android Auto), and wrist watches (Android Wear).
The OS uses touch inputs that loosely correspond to real-world actions, like swiping, tapping,
pinching, and reverse pinching to manipulate on-screen objects, and a virtual keyboard. Despite
being primarily designed for touchscreen input, it also has been used in game consoles, digital
cameras, and other electronics.

As of 2011, Android has the largest installed base of any mobile OS and as of 2013, its devices
also sell more than Windows, iOS, and Mac OSdevices combined.[14][15][16][17] As of July
2013 the Google Play store has had over 1 million Android apps published, and over 50 billion
apps downloaded.[18] A developer survey conducted in April–May 2013 found that 71% of mobile
developers develop for Android.[19] At Google I/O2014, the company revealed that there were
over 1 billion active monthly Android users (that have been active for 30 days), up from 538
million in June 2013.[20]

Android's source code is released by Google under open source licenses, although most Android
devices ultimately ship with a combination of open source and proprietary software.[3] Initially
developed by Android, Inc., which Google backed financially and later bought in 2005,[21]Android
was unveiled in 2007 along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance—a consortium
of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open
standards for mobile devices.[22]

Android is popular with technology companies which require a ready-made, low-cost and
customizable operating system for high-tech devices.[23]Android's open nature has encouraged a
large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open-source code as a foundation for
community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users[24] or bring Android to
devices which were officially released running other operating systems. The operating system's
success has made it a target for patent litigation as part of the so-called "smartphone wars"
between technology companies.[25][26]

History
See also: Android version history

Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin (co-founder
of Danger),[27] Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc.),[28] Nick Sears[29] (once
VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV)[21] to
develop, in Rubin's words "smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location
and preferences".[21] The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating
system for digital cameras, when it was realized that the market for the devices was not large
enough, and diverted their efforts to producing a smartphone operating system to rival those
of Symbian and Windows Mobile.[30] Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early
employees, Android Inc. operated secretly, revealing only that it was working on software for
mobile phones.[21] That same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a close friend of
Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope and refused a stake in the company.[31]

Google acquired Android Inc. on August 17, 2005; key employees of Android Inc., including
Rubin, Miner, and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition.[21] Not much was known
about Android Inc. at the time, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile
phone market with this move.[21] At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device
platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers
and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. Google had lined up a
series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to
various degrees of cooperation on their part.[32][33][34]

Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to
build through December 2006.[35] An earlier prototype codenamed "Sooner" had a closer
resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen, and a physical, QWERTY keyboard,
but was later re-engineered to support a touchscreen, to compete with other announced devices
such as the 2006 LG Prada and 2007 Apple iPhone.[36][37] In September
2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several
patent applications in the area of mobile telephony.[38][39]

On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies

including Google, device manufacturers such as HTC,Sony and Samsung, wireless carriers such
as Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, and chipset makers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments,
unveiled itself, with a goal to develop open standards for mobile devices.[22] That day, Android
was unveiled as its first product, a mobile deviceplatform built on the Linux kernel version
2.6.25.[22][40] The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream,
released on October 22, 2008.[41]

In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices – a line of smartphones and tablets
running the Android operating system, and built by manufacturing partners. HTC collaborated
with Google to release the first Nexus smartphone,[42] the Nexus One. Google has since updated
the series with newer devices, such as the Nexus 5 phone (made by LG) and the Nexus 7 tablet
(made by Asus). Google releases the Nexus phones and tablets to act as their flagship Android
devices, demonstrating Android's latest software and hardware features. On March 13,
2013 Larry Page announced in a blog post that Andy Rubin had moved from the Android division
to take on new projects at Google.[43] He was replaced bySundar Pichai, who also continues his
role as the head of Google's Chrome division,[44] which develops Chrome OS.

Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have incrementally improved the
operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases. Each major release
is named in alphabetical order after a dessert or sugary treat; for example, version
1.5 Cupcake was followed by 1.6 Donut. The latest released version, 4.4.4 KitKat, appeared as a
security-only update; it was released on June 19, 2014, shortly after the release of 4.4.3.[5][45][46]
From 2010 to 2013, Hugo Barra served as product spokesperson for the Android team,
representing Android at both press conferences and Google I/O, Google’s annual developer-
focused conference. Barra’s product involvement included the entire Android ecosystem of
software and hardware, including Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean
and KitKat operating system launches, the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 smartphones, the Nexus
7[47] and Nexus 10 tablets,[48] and other related products such as Google Now[49] and Google
Voice Search, Google’s speech recognition product comparable to Apple’s Siri.[49] In 2013 Barra
left the Android team for Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.[50]

FEATURES

1) INTERFACE:-

Android's default user interface is based on direct manipulation,[51] using touch inputs,
that loosely correspond to real-world actions, like swiping, tapping, pinching, and reverse
pinching to manipulate on-screen objects, and a virtual keyboard.[51] The response to
user input is designed to be immediate and provides a fluid touch interface, often using
the vibration capabilities of the device to provide haptic feedback to the user. Internal
hardware such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and proximity sensors[52] are used by
some applications to respond to additional user actions, for example adjusting the screen
from portrait to landscape depending on how the device is oriented, or allowing the user
to steer a vehicle in a racing game by rotating the device, simulating control of a steering
wheel.[53]

Android devices boot to the homescreen, the primary navigation and information point on
the device, which is similar to the desktop found on PCs. Android homescreens are
typically made up of app icons and widgets; app icons launch the associated app,
whereas widgets display live, auto-updating content such as the weather forecast, the
user's email inbox, or a news ticker directly on the homescreen.[54] A homescreen may be
made up of several pages that the user can swipe back and forth between, though
Android's homescreen interface is heavily customisable, allowing the user to adjust the
look and feel of the device to their tastes.[55] Third-party apps available on Google
Play and other app stores can extensively re-theme the homescreen, and even mimic the
look of other operating systems, such as Windows Phone.[56] Most manufacturers, and
some wireless carriers, customise the look and feel of their Android devices to
differentiate themselves from their competitors.[57]

Present along the top of the screen is a status bar, showing information about the device
and its connectivity. This status bar can be "pulled" down to reveal a notification screen
where apps display important information or updates, such as a newly received email or
SMS text, in a way that does not immediately interrupt or inconvenience the
 user.[58] Notifications are persistent until read (by tapping, which opens the relevant app)
or dismissed by sliding it off the screen. Beginning on Android 4.1, "expanded
notifications" can display expanded details or additional functionality; for instance, a
music player can display playback controls, and a "missed call" notification provides
buttons for calling back or sending the caller an SMS message.[59]

Android provides the ability to run applications which change the default launcher and hence
the appearance and externally visible behaviour of Android. These appearance changes
include a multi-page dock or no dock, and many more changes to fundamental features of
the user interface.

Applications
See also: Android software development and Google Play

Android has a growing selection of third party applications, which can be acquired by users either
through an app store such as Google Play or theAmazon Appstore, or by downloading and
installing the application's APK file from a third-party site.[61] Google Play Store allows users to
browse, download and update applications published by Google and third-party developers, and
the Play Store client application is pre-installed on devices that comply with Google's
compatibility requirements and license the Google Mobile Services software.[62][63] The client
application filters the list of available applications down to those compatible with the user's
device, and developers may restrict their applications to particular carriers or countries for
business reasons.[64] Purchases of unwanted applications can be refunded within 15 minutes of
the time of download,[65] and some carriers offer direct carrier billing for Google Play application
purchases, where the cost of the application is added to the user's monthly bill.[66]

As of July 2013, there are more than one million applications available for Android in Play
Store.[67] As of May 2013, 48 billion apps have been installed from Google Play store.[68]

Applications ("apps"), that extend the functionality of devices, are developed primarily in
the Java programming language[69] using the Android software development kit (SDK). The SDK
includes a comprehensive set of development tools,[70] including a debugger, software libraries, a
handset emulator based on QEMU, documentation, sample code, and tutorials. The officially
supported integrated development environment (IDE) is Eclipse using the Android Development
Tools (ADT) plugin. Other development tools are available, including a Native Development Kitfor
applications or extensions in C or C++, Google App Inventor, a visual environment for novice
programmers, and various cross platform mobile web applications frameworks.

It was announced in January 2014 that Chrome HTML5 web applications should become
available, using a compatibility layer from the open source Apache Cordova framework to allow
such applications to be wrapped in a native application shell, enabling their distribution over
Google Play.[71]
Memory management
Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory
(RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which
generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no
longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory – while the app is still
technically "open", suspended apps consume no resources (for example, battery power or
processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of
increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since applications do not need to be
closed and reopened from scratch each time, and also ensuring that background applications do
not consume power needlessly.[72][73]

Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will
begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they
were last used (oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users
do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves.[74][75] However, confusion over
Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular
on Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm
than good.[76]

Open-source community
Android has an active community of developers and enthusiasts who use the Android Open
Source Project (AOSP) source code to develop and distribute their own modified versions of the
operating system.[130] These community-developed releases often bring new features and
updates to devices faster than through the official manufacturer/carrier channels, albeit without
as extensive testing or quality assurance;[24] provide continued support for older devices that no
longer receive official updates; or bring Android to devices that were officially released running
other operating systems, such as the HP TouchPad. Community releases often come pre-
rooted and contain modifications unsuitable for non-technical users, such as the ability
to overclockor over/undervolt the device's processor.[131] CyanogenMod is the most widely used
community firmware,[132] and acts as a foundation for numerous others.