History Of Android
Android is a touchscreen mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, developed primarily for smartphones and tablets. Google commercially sponsors Android, which is created by a group of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance. It debuted in November 2007 with the release of the first commercial Android smartphone, the Nexus One. It was introduced in November 2007, and the HTC Dream, the first commercial Android smartphone, was released in September 2008.
It is free and open-source software, with the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) as its source code, which is largely licensed under the Apache License. Most Android devices, however, come pre-installed with proprietary software, most notably Google Mobile Services (GMS] which includes essential programs like Google Chrome, the digital distribution network Google Play, and the related Google Play Services development platform.
Around 70% of Android devices run Google's ecosystem, with others including vendor-specific user interfaces and software suites, such as Samsung's TouchWiz and later One UI, and HTC's Sense. Amazon's Fire OS and LineageOS are two competing Android ecosystems and forks. The "Android" name and logo, on the other hand, are trademarks of Google, which imposes restrictions that prevent "uncertified" devices from using the Android branding outside of its ecosystem.
The source code has been used to create Android versions for a variety of different devices, including gaming consoles, digital cameras, portable media players, PCs, and other devices, each with its own user interface. Android TV for televisions and Wear OS for wearables, both created by Google, are two well-known variants. On Android, software packages in the APK format are often distributed through proprietary app stores such as Google Play Store, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei AppGallery, Cafe Bazaar, and GetJar, as well as open source platforms such as Aptoide or F-Droid.
Since 2011, Android has been the most popular smartphone and tablet operating system in the world. It has over three billion monthly active users as of May 2021, the biggest installed base of any operating system, and the Google Play Store has over three million apps as of January 2021. Android 11 is the most recent stable version, which was released on September 8, 2020.
History
Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White launched Android Inc. in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003. "There is great promise in building smarter mobile devices that are more aware of their owner's location and preferences," Rubin said of the Android initiative. The company's initial plans were to build an improved operating system for digital cameras, which was the foundation of their April 2004 investor pitch. The firm then concluded that the camera market was insufficient for its objectives, and five months later, it was presenting Android as a smartphone operating system to compete with Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile.
Early on, Rubin had trouble recruiting investors, and Android was about to be evicted from its office premises. Rubin's close friend Steve Perlman handed him $10,000 in cash in an envelope and wired an undisclosed amount as initial financing shortly after. "I did it because I believed in the product, and I wanted to help Andy," Perlman said when asked why he didn't take a part in the firm.
Rubin attempted to strike partnerships with Samsung and HTC in 2005. In July of that year, Google bought the firm for at least $50 million; according to Google's then-vice president of corporate development, David Lawee, this was the company's "greatest transaction ever." As part of the deal, Google hired key Android personnel such as Rubin, Miner, Sears, and White. At the time, nothing was known about the mysterious Android Inc., with the firm only revealing that it developed software for mobile phones. Rubin's team at Google created a mobile device platform based on the Linux kernel. Google promised phone manufacturers and carriers that the platform would be flexible and upgradeable. "Google set up a number of hardware and software partners and communicated to carriers that it was open to varying degrees of cooperation," according to the report.
Through December 2006, speculation regarding Google's plans to enter the mobile communications industry grew. With no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, an early version resembled a BlackBerry phone, but with the advent of the Apple iPhone in 2007, Android "had to go back to the drawing board." Although "the Product was built with the existence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, hence a touchscreen cannot entirely replace physical buttons," Google later amended its Android specification papers to indicate that "Touchscreens will be supported." By 2008, Nokia and BlackBerry had both introduced touch-based smartphones to compete with the iPhone 3G, and Android's focus had shifted to touchscreens exclusively. The HTC Dream, commonly known as the T-Mobile G1, was introduced on September 23, 2008 as the first commercially accessible Android smartphone.
The Open Handset Alliance was launched on November 5, 2007, by a group of technology companies including Google, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung, as well as wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile and chipset makers Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, with the goal of creating "the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices." Within a year, the Open Handset Alliance was up against two other open source competitors: the Symbian Foundation and the LiMo Foundation, the latter of which, like Google, was creating a Linux-based mobile operating system. Google had submitted many patent applications in the domain of mobile telephony, according to an Evalueserve research published in September 2007.
Since 2008, Android has seen a slew of upgrades that have gradually enhanced the operating system by introducing new features and correcting issues in earlier versions. Each major release is named after a dessert or sugary delicacy in alphabetical sequence, with the first several Android versions being dubbed "Cupcake," "Donut," "Eclair," and "Froyo," respectively. "Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert," Google said when announcing Android KitKat in 2013, though a Google spokesperson told CNN in an interview that "it's kind of like an internal team thing, and we prefer to be a little bit — how should I say — a little bit inscrutable in the public eye." "Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert," Google said when announcing Android KitKat in 2013, though a Google spokesperson told CNN in an interview that "it's kind of like an internal team thing, and we prefer to be a little bit — how should I say — a little bit inscrutable in the matter, I'll say."
Google introduced its Nexus series of devices in 2010, a lineup in which the company collaborated with several device makers to create new devices and release new Android versions. The series was praised for "playing a crucial part in Android's history by bringing new software iterations and hardware standards across the board," as well as its "bloat-free" software and "timely... upgrades." Google introduced a customized version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 in May 2013 at its developer conference, where the phone ran "stock Android" instead of Samsung's own Android modification and was guaranteed to get new system upgrades quickly. It was the first smartphone to be released under the Google Play edition scheme, and it was followed by the HTC One Google Play edition and the Moto G Google Play edition. "Earlier this week, the last of the Google Play edition Android phones in Google's online bookstore were labeled as "no longer available for sale," and "Now they're all gone, and it appears like the initiative has finished up," Ars Technica said in 2015.
Hugo Barra was the product spokesman for Android from 2008 to 2013, attending press conferences and Google I/O, Google's annual developer conference. In August 2013, he left Google to join Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer. Google's then-CEO Larry Page had stated in a blog post less than six months prior that Andy Rubin had left the Android division to work on other projects at Google, and that Sundar Pichai would take over as the new Android lead. Following the company's reorganization into the Alphabet conglomerate in August 2015, Pichai would eventually transfer jobs, becoming the new CEO of Google and appointing Hiroshi Lockheimer as the new head of Android.
For user-installed apps in Android 4.4 Kit Kat, shared writing access to MicroSD memory cards was disabled, leaving just the specialized folders with appropriate package names, stored inside Android/data/, writeable. With Android 5 Lollipop, writing access has been restored via the backwards-incompatible Google Storage Access Framework interface.
In June 2014, Google unveiled Android One, a collection of "hardware reference models" aimed for developing-country customers that would "enable [device makers] to quickly produce high-quality phones at cheap costs." Google released the first wave of Android One phones for India in September. In June 2015, however, Recode called the project a "disappointment," blaming "reluctant consumers and manufacturing partners" as well as "misfires from the search company that has never fully grasped hardware."
The phones were released in October 2016 and were advertised as Google's first phones[67][68] because they were the first to include key software features, such as the Google Assistant, before being rolled out to the general public. With the debut of a new generation of Pixel phones in October 2017, the Nexus series was superseded by the Pixel phones.
The operating system became embroiled in the trade war between China and the United States in May 2019, including Huawei, which, like many other tech companies, had become reliant on access to the Android platform. Huawei said in the summer of 2019 that it would develop Harmony OS, an alternative operating system to Android, and that it has applied for intellectual property rights in major worldwide markets. Huawei has no intentions to replace Android in the foreseeable future because Harmony OS is intended for internet of things devices rather than smartphones.
On August 22, 2019, it was revealed that Android "Q" will be renamed Android 10, putting a stop to the long-standing tradition of naming major releases after desserts. These names were not "inclusive" to foreign users, according to Google (due either to the aforementioned foods not being internationally known, or being difficult to pronounce in some languages). Google has commissioned a monument of a gigantic number "10" to be put in the entrance of the developers' new workplace, according to Android Police. Google Pixel phones were the first to receive Android 10 on September 3, 2019.
With scoped storage, traditional writing access to the common internal user storage has been disabled, leaving just app-specific folders open. The backwards-incompatible Storage Access Framework is the sole way to access files and folders on the outside. While these limitations are said to protect user privacy, private app-specific folders have existed beneath /data/ since the operating system's early editions.
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