Hi Friends,
I started to learn Android mobile application development. Am sharing my learning stuffs to you. I hope it will be helpful for the beginners who is starting to develop Android apps like me.
What is Android?
Android is the name of the mobile operating system owned by Google. Android is based on the Linux Kernel and designed primarily for Touchscreen mobile devices such as Smartphones and Tablets.
Android is an Open Source Operating system for smart devices. The source code for Android is available under free and open source software licenses.
The first beta version of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) was released by Google in 2007 where as the first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in September 2008.
What is Android Applications?
Android applications are usually developed in the Java language using the Android Software Development Kit. Android applications can be packaged easily and sold out either through a store such as Google Play Store, Opera Mobile Store, and the Amazon Appstore.
Every day more than 1 million new Android devices are activated worldwide.
Android applications are the world largest installed mobile OS and growing fast.
Android Versions:
Android OS Versions. Courtesy: Recombu
Work Environment Setup:
Android application development on either of the following Operating Systems –
- Windows OS
- Mac OS X
- Linux
We required some tools to develop Android applications and the tools can be downloaded from the web.
- Java SE Development Kit (JDK)
- Android Software Development Kit (SDK)
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Android Studio
- Eclipse + Android Developer Tools (ADT)
I personally using and suggesting the Android Studio for Android application development.
Why Android Studio?
- Supported by Google
- Fast to use and understand
- It is providing the Android SDK
- SDK manager provides the SDK updates
- Providing the code suggestions
Android Architecture:
Android is an open source, Linux-based software stack created for a wide array of devices and form factors. The following diagram shows the major components of the Android platform.
Android Architecture Courtesy: developer.android.com
Application Components:
Application components are the essential building blocks of an Android application. The main components are listed below,
- Activities: An activity represents a single screen with a user interface,in-short Activity performs actions on the screen.
- Service: A service is a component that runs in the background to perform long-running operations.
- Broadcast Receivers: Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from other applications or from the system.
- Content Providers: A content provider component supplies data from one application to others on request. Such requests are handled by the methods of the ContentResolverclass. The data may be stored in the file system, the database or somewhere else entirely.
Will share the basic of the code components, memory management in the next post.
Please share your comments if anything missed or if any information is wrong. Thanks.
Ref:
- developer.android.com
- tutorialspoint.com
Yuvaraj.M 