What is android?

What Is Android?

Mobile phones, like your computer, have an operating system. It can be something simple, with few to no graphics and no color, that just allows you to make phone calls. Or it could be extremely powerful, letting you do almost everything you can do with your desktop com- puter.

Android is an operating system for your mobile phone and definitely falls into the second cat- egory. Not only does Android offer you a powerful Internet experience, but tools are also pro- vided via the Internet to let people write their own applications for the phone.

In addition to Internet connectivity and programmability, Android has been released under the Apache v2 open-source license.

How It All Comes Together
Suddenly, you have the perfect operating system for mobile devices. And you have a community of developers ready and willing to create applications for the device. Now all you need is the device. That’s how the T-Mobile G1—the first Android-based device—came onto the scene.

         

Figure I.1
The T-Mobile G1.

The G1 is a simple device that many criticised for not being sleek or flashy when it first hit the market. Still, it didn’t take T-Mobile and HTC long to rectify the mistake. Less than a year after the release of the G1 a sleeker, sexier Android-based phone—the T-Mobile myTouch—made its appearance. The myTouch has all the great function- ality of its predecessor, just in a prettier package.