#Android Mobile Operating System


Google needs no introduction and so is the case with its popular mobile Operating system "Android". However, it’s not evolved in a day or two, Android Inc. Was founded in Oct 2003, in Palo Alto, California. Like other popular programming language as Java, C, C++, Python, android has an interesting story too.

Do you know? The intent to develop Android was to make an advance operating system for digital cameras, but soon they realized the limited scope of digital camera market and after few months they completely diverted their focus on handset operating system like Microsoft Windows Mobile and Symbian. Before we dig dipper into Android and its scope, lets quickly understand the basics behind this popular technology.


#Android - What does it mean?

It’s a mobile operating system developed by Google on Linux based open source. However, it’s not just limited to Smartphones. Now, its variants are used on SmartTV, Car(Android Auto), gaming consoles, digital cameras, PC’s etc.. After basic introduction, did you get the motive of naming the popular mobile OS as Android? Well, there are speculative stories behind this. However, it’s believed that “Andy Rubin’s” coworkers at Apple gave him this nickname back in 1989 because of his fascination & passion towards robots.

Andy Rubin - The Creator of Android

Source : wikipedia
Andrew E. "Andy" Rubin is an American computer programmer, engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the founder and CEO of tech startup incubator Playground Global and a partner at venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures. You can follow him on Twitter @Arubin


Features of Android

#1. It’s open source and anyone can customize it.
2. Multitasking & memory allocation for smooth functionality.
3. Web browser is based on open source blink and Google mandated        Chrome(Google Chrome) as default browser.
4. Endless Apps to choose: Since Android is open source development platform, users have options to choose desired application.

It provides support for messaging services(SMS and MMS), web browser, storage (SQLite), connectivity (GSM, CDMA, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi etc.), media, handset layout etc.


Android Development & Supported Programming Languages:

Most of the syntax are Java inspired. It's possible to use HTML & programming languages like: "Kotlin", C++, python, Lua, Javascript, C#. SQLite used for data storage purpose. Above all, have you heard about the term “Kotlin”? Let’s quickly talk about it. Kotlin is statically typed programming language that runs on JVM(Java virtual Machine). Kotlin quickly becoming developer's favorite tool for app designing and development. JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin in July 2011 which received first-party support from Google, announced in Google I/O 2017. Like the initial story of "Android" and "Sweet items" there's Fun fact associated with project Kotlin too: it’s named after Island Kotlin, near St. Petersburg. Reft to official page : https://kotlinlang.org/


All Versions of Android:

The first release of Android mobile operating system was Android alpha in November 5, 2007 and first commercial version was released in September 2008 named Android 6.0 "Marshmallow". The most recent major Android update is "Android P ver.9" , which was released in June 6, 2018(beta 2).

Ever wondered why every major Android version released named after something sweet items?? Well, there are many assumptions like the name "Android" in public domain associated with this story too and it's beleived that Andy loved desserts the most, thus naming Android versions with sweet items was purely his idea and the idea still rooling!