The Android Platform

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
After studying this module student should be able to:

• Know History of mobile application development

• What Android is (and what it isn’t)
• List different version of Android
• Describe Android SDK features
• Understand Android architecture
• Enumerate factors that affect Mobile Application development

INTRODUCTION
Android is an operating system that powers mobile devices and is one of the most
popular mobile platforms today. Android platform runs on hundreds of millions of
mobile devices throughout the world. It's the largest installed operating system of any
mobile operating system and growing rapidly day by day.

You can develop apps and games using Android and it gives you an open
marketplace for distributing your apps and games instantly.

Android is the operating system for powering screens of all sizes. Android version is
named after a dessert. The latest version of android is Android 9.0 – Pie.

HISTORY OF MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

To understand what makes Android so convincing, you must study how mobile
development has evolved and how Android differs from other mobile platforms.

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available cell phone and it
is of brick size. First-generation mobiles were expensive, not particularly full featured
and has Proprietary software.

As mobile phone prices dropped, batteries improved, and reception areas grew,
more and more people began carrying these handy devices. Customers began
pushing for more features and more games. They needed some way to provide a

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portal for entertainment and information services without allowing direct access to
the handset.

Early phone has postage stamp-sized low-resolution screens and limited storage
and processing power, these phones couldn’t handle the data-intensive operations
required by traditional web browsers. The bandwidth requirements for data
transmission were also costly to the user.

Wireless Application Protocol

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) standard emerged to address above

concerns. WAP was stripped-down version of HTTP. WAP browsers were designed
to run within the memory and bandwidth constraints of the phone. Third-party WAP
sites served up pages written in a mark-up language called Wireless Markup
Language (WML). The WAP solution was great for handset manufacturers and
mobile operators. Phone users can access the news, stock market quotes, and
sports scores on their phones.

WAP fell short of commercial expectations due to following reasons and Critics
began to call WAP “Wait and Pay.”

• Handset screens were too small for surfing.

• WAP browsers, especially in the early days, were slow and frustrating.
• Reading a sentence fragment at a time, and then waiting seconds for the next
segment to download, ruined the user experience, especially because every
second of downloading was often charged to the user.
• Mobile operators who provided the WAP portal often restricted which WAP
sites were accessible.

Proprietary Mobile Platforms

Writing robust applications with WAP, such as graphic-intensive video games, was
nearly impossible. Memory was getting cheaper, batteries were getting better, and
PDAs and other embedded devices were beginning to run compact versions of
common operating systems such as Linux and Windows. A variety of different
proprietary platforms emerged and developers are still actively creating applications
for them. Some of the examples of proprietary mobile platform are:

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 • Palm OS (now Garnet OS)
• RIM BlackBerry OS
• Java Micro Edition [Java ME]
• Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW)
• Symbian OS
• OS X iPhone

Each platform has benefits and drawbacks.

OPEN HANDSET ALLIANCE (OHA)

The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was formed in November 2007, comprised of
many of the largest and most successful mobile companies on the planet. Its
members include chip makers, handset manufacturers, software developers, and
service providers. The entire mobile supply chain is well represented.

In their own words, the OHA represents the following: “A commitment to openness, a
shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality, to
accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and
better mobile experience”

The OHA hopes to deliver a better mobile software experience for consumers by
providing the platform needed for innovative mobile development at a faster rate and
with higher quality than existing platforms, without licensing fees for either software
developers or handset manufacturers.

THE ANDROID PLATFORM

Andy Rubin has been credited as the father of the Android platform. His company,
Android Inc., was acquired by Google in 2005. Working together, OHA members,
including Google, began developing a non-proprietary open standard platform based
upon technology developed at Android Inc. that would aim to solve the problems
hindering the mobile community. The result is the Android project.

Most Android platform development is completed by Rubin’s team at Google, where

he acts as VP of Engineering and manages the Android platform roadmap. Google
hosts the Android open-source project and provides online Android documentation,

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tools, forums, and the Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers. All major
Android news originates at Google.

What is android?

Android is called as “the first complete, open, and free mobile platform”:

Complete: allows for rich application development opportunities.

Open: It is provided through open-source licensing.

Free: Android applications are free to develop. Android applications can be

distributed and commercialized in a variety of ways.

Features of Android

• Free and Open Source

• Familiar and inexpensive development tools
• Freely available SDK
• Familiar Language, Familiar Development Environments
• Reasonable learning curve for developers
• Enabling development of powerful applications
• Rich, secure application integration
• No costly obstacles to publication
• Free “Market” for application
• A new growing platform

What it is not?

Android is not:

• A Java ME implementation: Android applications are written in the Java

language, but they are not run within a Java ME virtual machine, and Java-
compiled classes and executable will not run natively in Android.
• Part of the Linux Phone Standards Forum or the Open Mobile Alliance: Android
runs on an open-source Linux kernel, but, while their goals are similar, Android’s
complete software stack approach goes further than the focus of these
standards-defining organizations.
• Simply an application layer (like UIQ or S60): While Android does include an
application layer, ‘‘Android’’ also describes the entire software stack

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 encompassing the underlying operating system, the API libraries, and the
applications themselves.
• A mobile phone handset Android includes a reference design for mobile handset
manufacturers, but there is no single ‘‘Android phone.’’ Instead, Android has been
designed to support many alternative hardware devices.
• Google’s answer to the iPhone: The iPhone is a fully proprietary hardware and
software platform released by a single company (Apple), while Android is an
open-source software

THE ANDROID VERSION

Android is the operating system for powering screens of all sizes. Android version is
named after a dessert. The latest version of android is Android 9.0 – Pie. Following
table shows how the android platform evolves.

Android Name Feature API

Version Level
1.0 Alpha Web browser, Camera, Synchronization of 1
Gmail, Contact and Calendar, Google Maps,
Google Search, Google Talk,
Instant Messaging, Text Messaging and MMS,
Media Player, Notification, Voice Dialer,
YouTube Video Player
Other applications include: Alarm Clock,
Calculator, Dialer (Phone), Home screen
(Launcher), Pictures (Gallery), and Settings.
1.1 Beta The update resolved bugs, changed the Android 2
API and added a number of features such as
Details and reviews available when a user
searches for businesses on Maps, Ability to
show/hide dial pad and save attachments in
messages.
1.5 Cupcake Virtual keyboards with text prediction and user 3
dictionary for custom words, widgets, video

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Android Name Feature API
Version Level
recording and playback, Bluetooth, Copy and
Paste, animated screen transition, auto rotation,
upload video on YouTube, upload photo to
Picasa.
1.6 Donut Voice and text entry search, Multi-lingual 4
speech synthesis, updated technology support
for CDMA/EVDO, 802.1x, VPNs, and a text-to-
speech engine, WVGA screen resolutions,
Expanded Gesture framework and new Gesture
Builder development tool
2.0 Éclair Customize your home screen just the way you 5
2.0.1 want it. Arrange apps and widgets across 6
2.1 multiple screens and in folders. Stunning live 7
wallpapers respond to your touch.
2.2-2.2.3 Froyo Voice Typing lets you input text, while Voice 8
Actions allow you to control your phone, just by
speaking.
2.3 Gingerbread New sensors make Android great for gaming – 9-10
so you can touch, tap, tilt and play away.
3.0 Honeycomb Optimized for tablets. 11-13
4.0 Ice Cream A new, refined design. Simple, beautiful and 14-15
Sandwich beyond smart.
4.1-4.3 Jelly Bean Fast and smooth with slick graphics. With 16-18
Google Now, you get just the right information
at the right time.
4.4 Kit Kat A more polished design, improved performance 19-20
and new features.
5.0 Lolipop Get the smarts of Android on screens big and 21-22
small with the right information at the right
moment.
6.0 Marshmallow New App Drawer, Doze mode, Native finger 23
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Android Name Feature API
Version Level
print support, Android pay, USB type-C and
USB 3.1 support, Direct share.
7.0 Nougat Revamped notification, Split-screen use, file 24-25
based encryption, direct boot, data saver
8.0 Oreo Picture in picture, Google play protect, emoji 26-27
9.0 Pie Adaptive Battery, adaptive brightness, intuitive 28
navigation, dashboard, App timers, Wind down
and do not disturb, Digital wellbeing.

Table-1 Android Versions

NATIVE ANDROID APPLICATIONS

Android phones will normally come with a suite of generic preinstalled applications
that are part of the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP), including, but not
necessarily limited to:

• An e-mail client
• An SMS management application
• A full PIM (personal information management) suite including a calendar and
contacts list
• A Web Kit-based web browser
• A music player and picture gallery
• A camera and video recording application
• A calculator
• The home screens
• An alarm clocks

In many cases Android devices will also ship with the following proprietary Google
mobile applications:

• The Android Market client for downloading third-party Android applications

• A fully-featured mobile Google Maps application including Street View, driving
directions and turn-by-turn navigation, satellite view, and traffic conditions
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• The Gmail mail client
• The Google Talk instant-messaging client
• The YouTube video player

ANDROID SDK FEATURES

The true appeal of Android as a development environment lays in the APIs it

provides. As an application-neutral platform, Android gives you the opportunity to
create applications that are as much a part of the phone as anything provided out of
the box. The following list highlights some of the most noteworthy Android features:

• No licensing, distribution, or development fees or release approval processes

• Wi-Fi hardware access
• GSM, EDGE, and 3G networks for telephony or data transfer, enabling you to
make or receive calls or SMS messages, or to send and retrieve data across
mobile networks
• Comprehensive APIs for location-based services such as GPS
• Full multimedia hardware control, including playback and recording with the
camera and microphone
• APIs for using sensor hardware, including accelerometers and the compass
• Libraries for using Bluetooth for peer-to-peer data transfer
• IPC message passing
• Shared data stores
• Background applications and processes
• Home-screen Widgets, Live Folders, and Live Wallpaper
• The ability to integrate application search results into the system search
• An integrated open-source HTML5WebKit-based browser
• Full support for applications that integrate map controls as part of their user
interface
• Mobile-optimized hardware-accelerated graphics, including a path-based 2D
graphics library and support for 3D graphics using OpenGL ES 2.0
• Media libraries for playing and recording a variety of audio/video or still image
formats
• Localization through a dynamic resource framework

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• An application framework that encourages reuse of application components and
the replacement of native applications

ANDROID ARCHITECTURE
Android is an open source, Linux-based software stack created for a wide array of
devices and form factors. The following diagram shows the major components of the
Android platform.
The Linux Kernel
The foundation of the Android platform is the Linux kernel. For example, the Android
Runtime (ART) relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionalities such as
threading and low-level memory management. Using a Linux kernel allows Android
to take advantage of key security features and allows device manufacturers to
develop hardware drivers for a well-known kernel.

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

The hardware abstraction layer (HAL) provides standard interfaces that expose
device hardware capabilities to the higher-level Java API framework. The HAL
consists of multiple library modules, each of which implements an interface for a
specific type of hardware component, such as the camera or Bluetooth module.
When a framework API makes a call to access device hardware, the Android system
loads the library module for that hardware component.
Android Runtime
For devices running Android version 5.0 (API level 21) or higher, each app runs in its
own process and with its own instance of the Android Runtime (ART). ART is written
to run multiple virtual machines on low-memory devices by executing DEX files, a
byte code format designed especially for Android that's optimized for minimal
memory footprint. Build tool chains, such as Jack, compile Java sources into DEX
byte code, which can run on the Android platform.

Some of the major features of ART include the following:

• Ahead-of-time (AOT) and just-in-time (JIT) compilation
• Optimized garbage collection (GC)

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 • On Android 9 (API level 28) and higher, conversion of an app package's
Dalvik Executable format (DEX) files to more compact machine code.
• Better debugging support, including a dedicated sampling profiler, detailed
diagnostic exceptions and crash reporting, and the ability to set watch points
to monitor specific fields
Prior to Android version 5.0 (API level 21), Dalvik was the Android runtime. If your
app runs well on ART, then it should work on Dalvik as well, but the reverse may not
be true. Android also includes a set of core runtime libraries that provide most of the
functionality of the Java programming language, including some Java 8 language
features that the Java API framework uses.

Figure-1: Android Software Stack

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Native C/C++ Libraries
Many core Android system components and services, such as ART and HAL, are
built from native code that requires native libraries written in C and C++. The Android
platform provides Java framework APIs to expose the functionality of some of these
native libraries to apps. For example, you can access OpenGL ES through the
Android framework’s Java OpenGL API to add support for drawing and manipulating
2D and 3D graphics in your app. If you are developing an app that requires C or C++
code, you can use the Android NDK to access some of these native platform libraries
directly from your native code.

Java API Framework

The entire feature-set of the Android OS is available to you through APIs written in
the Java language. These APIs form the building blocks you need to create Android
apps by simplifying the reuse of core, modular system components and services,
which include the following:
• A rich and extensible View System you can use to build an app’s UI, including
lists, grids, text boxes, buttons, and even an embeddable web browser
• A Resource Manager, providing access to non-code resources such as
localized strings, graphics, and layout files
• A Notification Manager that enables all apps to display custom alerts in the
status bar
• An Activity Manager that manages the lifecycle of apps and provides a
common navigation back stack
• Content Providers that enable apps to access data from other apps, such as
the Contacts app, or to share their own data

Developers have full access to the same framework APIs that Android system apps
use.

System Apps
Android comes with a set of core apps for email, SMS messaging, calendars,
internet browsing, contacts, and more. Apps included with the platform have no
special status among the apps the user chooses to install. So a third-party app can

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become the user's default web browser, SMS messenger, or even the default
keyboard (some exceptions apply, such as the system's Settings app).

The system apps function both as apps for users and to provide key capabilities that
developers can access from their own app. For example, if your app would like to
deliver an SMS message, you don't need to build that functionality you—you can
instead invoke whichever SMS app is already installed to deliver a message to the
recipient you specify.

Factors that affect Mobile Application development

You should keep in mind the following factors while developing mobile application:

• Low processing power

• Limited RAM
• Limited permanent storage capacity
• Small screens with low resolution
• High costs associated with data transfer
• Slow data transfer rates with high latency
• Unreliable data connections
• Limited battery life

Following is some of the factors that affect app development time:

• User Interface & User Experience.

• Custom application
• Resource availability
• App security and publishing the app
• App designing
• Number of screens/devices/platforms/operating systems
• Third party integration
• Features
• Understanding the business logic
• Complexity of the App

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Let us sum up
In this module we have discussed the history of mobile application development, you
have got detailed understanding of android and its version, android SDK features
and architecture, and we also elaborate factors that should be given consideration
while developing mobile application

References

• Android™ Wireless Application Development, Second Edition, Shane Conder

Lauren Darcey, Addison-Wesley, 2010
• Beginning Android™ Application Development, Wei-Meng Lee, Wiley Publishing
Inc., 2011

Acknowledgement: “The content in this module is modifications based on work

created and shared by the Android Open-Source Project and used according to
terms described in the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution License.”

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