Android is an open-source software platform developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance to address the growing needs of the mobile marketplace. It provides an innovative and open platform for mobile application development, customization of mobile phones, and delivery of value-added content to subscribers. Android allows developers unprecedented access to handset features and the ability to develop powerful mobile applications without licensing fees. It also gives users more choice and functionality in customizing their phones.

1. Chapter 1
Introduction

2. Introducing Android
• The mobile development community is at a tipping point.
• Mobile users demand more choice, more opportunities to
customize their phones, and more functionality.
• Mobile operators want to provide value-added content to
their subscribers in a manageable and lucrative way.
• Mobile developers want the freedom to develop the
powerful mobile applications to users demand with
minimal roadblocks to success.
• Finally, handset manufacturers want a stable, secure, and
affordable platform to power their devices.

3. ..cont
• Enter Android, which is a potential game-changer for
the mobile development community.
• An innovative and open platform, Android is well
positioned to address the growing needs of the mobile
marketplace.
• This chapter explains:
 What is Android?
 How and why it was developed? and
 Where the platform fits in to the established
mobile marketplace.

4. A Brief History of Mobile Software Development
Way Back When
• Remember way back when a phone was just a phone?
• When we relied on fixed landlines?
• When we ran for the phone instead of pulling it out of
our pocket?
• When we lost our friends at a crowded ballgame and
waited around for hours hoping to reunite?
• When we forgot the shop list and had to find a
payphone or drive back home again?

5. ..cont
• Those days are long gone.
• Today, commonplace problems such as these are easily
solved with a one-button speed dial or a simple text
message like “WRU?” or “20?” or “Milk and?”
• Our mobile phones keep us safe and connected.
• Now we roam around freely, relying on our phones not
only to keep in touch with friends, family, and
coworkers.
• but also tell us where to go, what to do, and how to do
it.

7. Remember the Brick?
• The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first
commercially available cell phone.
• First marketed in 1983, it was 13 x 1.75 x 3.5
inches in dimension, weighed about 2.5
pounds (1.135kg), and allowed you to talk for
a little more than half an hour.
• It retailed for $3,995, plus hefty monthly
service fees and per-minute charges.
• It made calls, and there was a simple contacts
application included in the operating system.

8. History: the first apps

9. History: the first apps
• First-generation mobile phones were designed and
developed by the handset manufacturers.
• Competition was fierce and trade secrets were closely
guarded.
• They didn’t want to expose the secrets of their
handsets, so they developed the phone software in-
house.
• Developers that weren’t part of this inner circle had no
opportunity to write applications for the phones.

10. History: the first apps
• It was during this period the first “time-waster” games begin
to appear.
• Nokia was famous for putting the 1970s video game Snake
on some of its earliest phones. Other followed, adding games
like Pong, Tetris, and Tic-Tac-Toe.
• These early phones changed the way people thought about
communication.
• As mobile phone prices dropped, batteries improved,
reception areas grew, and more and more people began
carrying these handy devices. Soon mobile phones were
more than just a novelty.

11. History: the first apps
• Customers began pushing for more features and more
games.
• But handset manufacturers didn’t have the motivation
or the resources to build every application users wanted.
• They needed some way to provide a portal for
entertainment and information services without
allowing direct access to the handset.
What better way to provide these services than the
Internet?

13. History: WAP is the answer!
• The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) standard was
developed to address these concerns.
• WAP was a stripped-down version of HTTP, which is the
basic protocol of the World Wide Web.
• 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 markup
language called Wireless Markup Language (WML).
• The pages were much simpler in design than the WWW
pages.

14. ..cont
• The WAP solution was great for handset manufacturers.
They could write one WAP browser to ship with the handset
and rely on developers to come up with the content users
wanted.
• The WAP solution was great for mobile operators.
They could provide a custom WAP portal directing their
subscribers to the content they wanted to provide, and
wallow in the high data charges associated with browsing.
But there was one problem –

15. ..cont
Problem?
• WAP browsers were slow and frustrating.
• Typing in long URLs with the numeric keypad was a tremendous pain.
• Most WAP sites were one version and did not account for individual
phone specifications.
• It didn’t matter if the end-user’s phone had a big color screen or a
postage stamp-sized monochrome one.
• Small handset screens were too small for surfing.
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 charged to the user.
• Critics began to call WAP “Wait and Pay.”

16. Proprietary Mobile Platforms

17. Proprietary Mobile Platforms
• Writing graphic-intensive video game applications with
WAP was nearly impossible
• The kids most likely to personalize their phones with
wallpapers and ring tones looked at their portable
gaming systems and asked for a device that was both a
phone and a gaming device or a phone and a music
player.
• Others looked to their digital cameras, Palms,iPods,
and even their laptops and asked the same question.
The market seemed to be teetering on the edge of
device convergence.

18. ..cont
• During that period Memory was getting cheaper; batteries
were getting better; and PDAs and other embedded
devices were beginning to run compact versions of
common operating systems like Linux and Windows.
• The traditional desktop application developer was suddenly
involved in the embedded device market, especially with
Smartphone technologies like Windows Mobile, which they
found familiar.
• Handset manufacturers realized that if they wanted to
continue to sell their products, they needed to change their
protectionist policies regarding handset design and expose
their internal workings to some extent.

19. ..cont
• A variety of different proprietary platforms emerged— and
developers are still actively creating applications for them.
 One of the first was the Palm OS (now Garnet OS) and RIM
Blackberry OS.
 Sun Microsystems popular Java platform became Java Micro
Edition (Java ME).
 Qualcomm developed its Binary Runtime Environment for
Wireless (BREW).
 Symbian OS was developed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola,
and Samsung.
 The Apple iPhone iOS joined the ranks in 2007.
 Google’s, Android came along a year later.

20. ..cont
• Each platform has benefits and drawbacks.
• Of course, developers love to debate about which platform is
“the best.” (Hint: It’s usually the platform we’re currently
developing for.)
• The truth is that no one platform has emerged victorious.
• Some platforms are best suited for commercializing games and
making millions—if your company has brand backing.
• Other platforms are more open and suitable for the hobbyist or
vertical market applications.
• No mobile platform is best suited for all possible applications.
• As a result, the mobile phone has become increasingly
fragmented, with all platforms sharing part of the pie.

22. ..cont
• For manufacturers and mobile operators, handset product lines
quickly became complicated.
• Platform market penetration varies greatly by region and user
demographic.
• The mobile developer community has become as fragmented as
the market. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the
changes in the market.
• Mobile software developers work with distinctly different
programming environments, different tools, and different
programming languages.

23. Open Handset Alliance
• The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was formed in November
5,2007 led by Google.
• It is committed to advance open standards, provide services
and deploy handsets using Android Platform
• The OHA is a business alliance comprised over 84 companies
which includes many of the largest and most successful
mobile companies on the planet such as Samsung, Synaptics,
Lenovo, LG,...
• Its members include chip makers, handset manufacturers,
software developers, and service providers.
• The entire mobile supply chain is well represented.

24. What is Android
• Android is a software package and linux based operating
system for mobile devices such as tablet computers and
smartphones.
• It is developed by Google and later the OHA (Open Handset
Alliance).
• Java language is mainly used to write the android code
even though other languages can be used in association.
• The goal of android project is to create a successful real-
world product that improves the mobile experience for end
users.

25. Features of Android
The important features of android are given below:
1. It is open-source: Developers have unprecedented access to the
handset features when developing applications
2. Free: There are no licensing or royalty fees to develop on the platform.
No required membership fees, testing fees, signing or certification fees.
Android applications can be distributed and commercialized in a
variety of ways. Anyone can customize the Android Platform.
3. There are a lot of mobile applications that can be chosen by the
consumer.
4. It provides many interesting features like weather details, opening
screen, location service, messaging services(SMS and MMS), web
browser, storage (SQLite), connectivity (GSM, CDMA, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi
etc.), media, handset layout etc.

26. Categories of Android applications
There are many android applications in the market. The top
categories are:
 Entertainment
 Tools
 Communication
 Productivity
 Personalization
 Music and Audio
 Social
 Media and Video
 Travel and Local etc.

27. Architecture
• Android operating system is a stack of software components which is roughly
divided into five sections and four main layers as shown below in the
architecture diagram

28. Architecture (..cont)
1. Linux kernel
• At the bottom of the layers is called Linux
• It provides basic system functionality like :
 process management
 memory management
 File management
 device management like camera, keypad, display etc.
• Also, the kernel handles all the things that Linux is really good at
such as: networking and a vast array of device drivers, which
take the pain out of interfacing to peripheral hardware.

29. ..cont
2. Libraries
• On top of Linux kernel there is a set of libraries
including:
 Open-source Web browser engine WebKit
 Well known library libc,
 SQLite database which is a useful repository for storage and
sharing of application data,
 Libraries to play and record audio and video,
 SSL libraries responsible for Internet security etc.

30. ..cont
3. Android Runtime
• This is the third section of the architecture and available on the
second layer from the bottom.
• This section provides a key component called Dalvik Virtual
Machine which is a kind of Java Virtual Machine specially
designed and optimized for Android.
• The Dalvik VM enables every Android application to run in its
own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual
machine.
• The Android runtime also provides a set of core libraries which
enable Android application developers to write Android
applications using standard Java programming language.

31. ..cont
4. Application Framework
• The Application Framework layer provides many
higher-level services to applications in the form of Java
classes.
• Application developers are allowed to make use of
these services in their applications.

32. ..cont
5. Applications
• You will find all the Android application at the top layer.
• You will write your application to be installed on this
layer only.
• Examples of such applications are Contacts Books,
Browser, Games etc.

33. Application Components
• Application components are the essential building
blocks of an Android application.
• These components are loosely coupled by the
application manifest file AndroidManifest.xml that
describes each component of the application and how
they interact.
• There are following four main components that can be
used within an Android application:
1. Activities 2. Services
3. Broadcast Receivers 4. Content Provider

34. ..cont
Components Description
Activities They dictate the UI and handle the user interaction to
the smartphone screen
Services They handle background processing associated with
an application.
Broadcast Receiver They handle communication between Android OS and
applications.
Content Provider They handle data and database management issues

35. ..cont
1. Activities
• An activity represents a single screen with a user interface.
• For example, an email application might have one activity that
shows a list of new emails, another activity to compose an email,
and another activity for reading emails.
If an application has more than one activity, then one of them
should be marked as the activity that is presented when the
application is launched.

36. ..cont
2. Services
• A service is a component that runs in the background
to perform long-running operations.
• For example, a service might play music in the
background while the user is in a different application,
or it might fetch data over the network without
blocking user interaction with an activity.

37. ..cont
3. Broadcast Receivers
• Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages
from other applications or from the system.
• For example, applications can also initiate broadcasts to let
other applications know that some data has been
downloaded to the device and is available for them to use,
so this is broadcast receiver who will intercept this
communication and will initiate appropriate action.
A broadcast receiver is implemented as a subclass of BroadcastReceiver
class and each message is broadcasted as an Intent object.

38. ..cont
4. Content Provider
• A content provider component supplies data from one
application to others on request.
• Such requests are handled by the methods of the
ContentResolver class.
• The data may be stored in the file system, the database or
somewhere else entirely.
• A content provider is implemented as a subclass of
ContentProvider class and must implement a standard set of
APIs that enable other applications to perform transactions.

39. Additional Components
• There are additional components which will be used in the
construction of above mentioned entities, their logic, and wiring
between them.
• These components are:

40. End of Chapter 1
Thank You!!!