Android (operating system) - Wikipedia. Android. Android 7.
Nougat home screen. Developer. Written in. Java (UI), C (core), C++. Android's user interface is mainly based on direct manipulation, using touch gestures that loosely correspond to real- world actions, such as swiping, tapping and pinching, to manipulate on- screen objects, along with a virtual keyboard for text input. In addition to touchscreen devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, and Android Wear for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, and other electronics. Initially developed by Android Inc., which Google bought in 2.
While a professional politician might have their hard-working American citizen cosplay down, us average Joes might not be as skilled when it comes to rolling up those. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you’re in the business and. Staff Writer, Lifehacker . He lives in Park Slope with. Tech and Science topics: phones, computers, gadgets, and the Internet, astronomy & earth science, climate & weather, environment & green living and much more.
Android was unveiled in 2. Open Handset Alliance – a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Beginning with the first commercial Android device in September 2.
Android applications (. Android has been the best- selling OS on tablets since 2.
As of May 2. 01. 7. Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready- made, low- cost and customizable operating system for high- tech devices. Its 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 deliver updates to older devices, add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices originally shipped with other operating systems. The extensive variation of hardware in Android devices causes significant delays for software upgrades, with new versions of the operating system and security patches typically taking months before reaching consumers, or sometimes not at all.
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The success of Android has made it a target for patent and copyright litigation between technology companies. History. Former Android logo wordmark (2. Android Inc. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $1. Perlman refused a stake in the company, and has stated . Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system.
Each major release is named in alphabetical order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called . During its announcement of Android Kit. Kat in 2. 01. 3, Google explained that . The series was described as having . He left Google in August 2. Chinese phone maker Xiaomi. Internal hardware, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and proximity sensors 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.
Attempting to figure out what’s going on in Julian Assange’s head is a daily struggle. After moving into the Ecuadorean embassy in London seven years ago to avoid. Focuses on the animation and storytelling aspects of Flash and covers the core skills needed for starting an animation project. Android Inc. Rubin described the Android project as.
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 a weather forecast, the user's email inbox, or a news ticker directly on the homescreen. This status bar can be . A Recents screen lets users switch between recently used apps. Initially, Google's supported integrated development environment (IDE) was Eclipse using the Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin; in December 2. Google released Android Studio, based on Intelli. J IDEA, as its primary IDE for Android application development.
Other development tools are available, including a native development kit (NDK) for applications or extensions in C or C++, Google App Inventor, a visual environment for novice programmers, and various cross platform mobile web applications frameworks. In January 2. 01. Google unveiled an framework based on Apache Cordova for porting Chrome. HTML 5web applications to Android, wrapped in a native application shell.
Google Play Store is the primary application store installed on Android devices that comply with Google's compatibility requirements and license the Google Mobile Services software. Examples of these third- party stores have included the Amazon Appstore, Get. Jar, and Slide. Me. F- Droid, another alternative marketplace, seeks to only provide applications that are distributed under free and open sourcelicenses. When an application is not in use the system suspends its operation so that, while available for immediate use rather than closed, it does not use battery power or CPU resources.
The software is available for developers, and was released in 2. Hardware. HTC Dream or T- Mobile G1, the first commercially released device running Android (2. The main hardware platform for Android is the ARM (ARMv.
ARMv. 8- A architectures), with x. MIPS and MIPS6. 4, and x. Android. Since 2. Android devices with Intel processors began to appear, including phones. While gaining support for 6. Android was first made to run on 6. ARM6. 4. Since Android 5.
Some applications may explicitly require a certain version of the Open. GL ES, and suitable GPU hardware is required to run such applications. Some hardware components are not required, but became standard in certain classes of devices, such as smartphones, and additional requirements apply if they are present.
Some other hardware was initially required, but those requirements have been relaxed or eliminated altogether. For example, as Android was developed initially as a phone OS, hardware such as microphones were required, while over time the phone function became optional.
The design team was tasked with a project to create a universally identifiable icon with the specific inclusion of a robot in the final design. After numerous design developments based on science fiction and space movies, the team eventually sought inspiration from the human symbol on restroom doors and modified the figure into a robot shape. As Android is open- source, it was agreed that the logo should be likewise, and since its launch the green logo has been reinterpreted into countless variations on the original design.
Except for devices within the Google Nexus brand, updates often arrive months after the release of the new version, or not at all. One of those components, Google Play Services, is a closed- source system- level process providing APIs for Google services, installed automatically on nearly all devices running Android 2. With these changes, Google can add new system functionality through Play Services and update apps without having to distribute an upgrade to the operating system itself. As stated by Bloomberg: .
Hiroshi Lockheimer, the Android lead, admitted that . Wireless carriers were described in the report as the . HTC's then- executive Jason Mackenzie called monthly security updates . In a further effort for persuasion, Google shared a list of top phone makers measured by updated devices with its Android partners, and is considering making the list public. Mike Chan, co- founder of phone maker Nextbit and former Android developer, said that .
As of 2. 01. 7, Android devices mainly use versions 3. Linux kernel. The interfaces are the same but the upstream Linux implementation allows for two different suspend modes: to memory (the traditional suspend that Android uses), and to disk (hibernate, as it is known on the desktop). However, root access can be obtained by exploiting security flaws in Android, which is used frequently by the open- source community to enhance the capabilities of their devices. Development of the Linux kernel continues independently of other Android's source code bases.
Until version 5. 0, Android used Dalvik as a process virtual machine with trace- based just- in- time (JIT) compilation to run Dalvik . Following the trace- based JIT principle, in addition to interpreting the majority of application code, Dalvik performs the compilation and native execution of select frequently executed code segments (.
In Android 4. 4, ART was an experimental feature and not enabled by default; it became the only runtime option in the next major version of Android, 5. Bionic itself has been designed with several major features specific to the Linux kernel. The main benefits of using Bionic instead of the GNU C Library (glibc) or u. Clibc are its smaller runtime footprint, and optimization for low- frequency CPUs. At the same time, Bionic is licensed under the terms of the BSD licence, which Google finds more suitable for the Android's overall licensing model. This made it difficult to port existing Linux applications or libraries to Android.
Community releases often come pre- rooted and contain modifications not provided by the original vendor, such as the ability to overclock or over/undervolt the device's processor. Manufacturers express concern about improper functioning of devices running unofficial software and the support costs resulting from this. As a result, technical obstacles including locked bootloaders and restricted access to root permissions are common in many devices. However, as community- developed software has grown more popular, and following a statement by the Librarian of Congress in the United States that permits the . As a result of this, over time the need to circumvent hardware restrictions to install unofficial firmware has lessened as an increasing number of devices are shipped with unlocked or unlockable bootloaders, similar to Nexus series of phones, although usually requiring that users waive their devices' warranties to do so.
They are reportedly able to read almost all smartphone information, including SMS, location, emails, and notes. GCHQ has, according to The Guardian, a wiki- style guide of different apps and advertising networks, and the different data that can be siphoned from each. Other malware displays unwanted and intrusive advertisements on the device, or sends personal information to unauthorised third parties. Google also wrote that . Google was starting from scratch with zero percent market share, so it was happy to give up control and give everyone a seat at the table in exchange for adoption. As such, security has become a big issue.
What Is Microsoft's Grand Plan for Phones? It has been nearly two years since Microsoft introduced a new Windows phone.
Sure, HP is still making Windows phones and marketing them to businesses, but Microsoft has been basically silent on the subject of its flagging mobile platform since 2. There have been zero flagship devices, despite the persistent rumors of a super Surface phone. Logic dictates that Microsoft needs to get in the game here.
People are increasingly moving away from their laptops and onto their smartphones, and if Microsoft wants to keep up with Apple and Google, it will need a convincing phone platform. The company apparently has something in the works. According to Windows Central, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed as much on the Marketplace podcast Make Me Smart earlier this week.“I’m sure we’ll make more phones,” Nadella told host Molly Wood, “but they will not look like phones that are there today.”Let’s step back for a moment. Windows 1. 0 on a phone today has two things going for it.
First, the interface is gorgeous—sleek and minimalist, without any of the cutesy affectations that i. OS and Android have collected over the years. Second, the phones function as mini PCs thanks to Continuum, so you can phone during the day and then dock it at your monitor and keyboard for a traditional PC experience at night. But the current version of Windows on mobile phones, Windows 1. Mobile, was introduced waaaaaay back in 2. Microsoft’s last flagship, the Lumia 9. Windows for a phone was already late to the scene when Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 in 2.
By then, Apple was a powerhouse with the i. Phone, and Google had forged a worthy competitor with great Android devices like the Motorola Droid. But Microsoft’s mobile look was so radically cool, it conceivably had a chance to be a true contender. At the time, even Gizmodo was enraptured. Only instead of radically disrupting the mobile phone market, Microsoft saw itself playing a distant third fiddle to the titans, Apple and Google. Everything really was different. Microsoft was accustomed to making the best- selling OS, and its failure to find its way into the lucrative mobile market left Microsoft scrambling.
First there was the massive Windows 8 redesign that spanned mobile and desktop devices. Then Cortana came in 8.
Windows phones a digital assistant to rival Siri. In 2. 01. 5, Microsoft introduced Continuum, which let phone users plug their devices into a monitor and keyboard and get a Windows experience similar to the one enjoyed by desktop users. But as cool as Microsoft’s attempts at competing have been, the company has failed to break into the elite mobile OS inner ring. By the time it arrived, users had already bought into the Android and i. OS ecosystems, and developers, who were already building apps for two mobile operating systems, had little desire to add a third, far less lucrative one to their roadmaps. Sure, the many iterations of Windows for phones looked nice enough, and had the backing of Microsoft, but its constant game of catch up with Apple and Google made the phones built for the platforms unappealing. That hasn’t changed, and it’s one of the reasons why, just last month, Android overtook Windows as the most installed OS in the world, according to one estimation.
Hopefully, this two- year- long news void in the mobile phone market is the result of Microsoft working like hell to make something new. Microsoft can’t gain a measurable share of the smartphone market (and thus interest from app developers) without first making a product consumers really want to buy, and it can’t do that without wildly wowing us with hardware radically different than what the likes of Apple and Samsung currently provide. As we noted last year, smartphones have become universally so good they’re boring, and they’re also so expensive now, that people are moving away from the two- year purchase cycle. Microsoft not only has to make a great phone, it has to be a disruptive one—and there’s no clear path to such a device apparent in the stable of phones on the market. In other words, Microsoft needs to blow our collective minds. So what would a future Windows phone look like?
Ahead of Microsoft’s hardware event last week, we might have hoped for a cloud- based phone, but that dream was shuttered when the long- rumored Windows 1. Cloud was officially named Windows 1. S. Instead of being a window into the cloud computing future, Windows 1.
S resembles lightweight Windows variations like Windows RT and Windows 8. Bing. It’s not cloud- based, but rooted in the computer and inextricably linked to Windows’ wasteland of an app Store.
And that Store isn’t going to just improve overnight. As already noted, Microsoft needs a robust stable of developers in order to bring in mobile users, but developers want a large user base before they dedicate time and money to a platform. So Microsoft is left at a frustratingly cyclical impasse.
Which means whatever we see is going to have to be so different, so wild, that neither developers nor consumers will care. Get cracking Microsoft. We’re ready for that Surface Phone.