Android App

Development

History of Android

Android OS was developed by Android Inc., a mobile software development

start-up founded in Palo Alto, California by Andy Rubin, Nick Sears and Rich
Miner in October 2003

Android Inc. was later acquired by Google in July, 2005

On November 2007, the OHA or Open Handset Alliance was established, which
is a consortium of OEMs like Samsung, carriers like T-Mobile, chipset makers
like Qualcomm and of course, Google.

The first Android smartphone, the HTC Dream was released in October, 2008

AOSP vs Android

The OHA develops and maintains AOSP or Android Open Source Project, which
is available for developers around the World to test and experiment with new
features and add features of their own

The Android we get on Smartphones and Tablets, however, is controlled by

Google. It comes with Google Apps PlayStore, Gmail, YouTube, Search, Maps
etc.

Google develops and distributes stock Android (plain Vanilla), found on Nexus
and Android ONE devices

OEMs and carriers apply their own skins and pre-install their own apps over
stock Android like Samsungs TouchWiz

Android Flavours
After the v1.1 Beta or Base release, each new Android version released
annually is named after a dessert in sequence of English alphabets

Alphabet

Version Name

Version Number

API Levels

Cupcake

1.5

API 3

Donut

1.6

API 4

clair

2.0 2.1.x

API 5 API 7

Froyo

2.2.x

API 8

Gingerbread

2.3 2.3.4

API 9 API 10

Honeycomb

3.0.x 3.2

API 11 API 13

Ice-Cream Sandwich

4.0 4.0.4

API 14 API 15

JellyBean

4.1 4.3

API 16 API 18

KitKat

4.4

API 19 API 20

Lollipop

5.0 5.1

API 21 API 22

Portfolio

Over the years, Android has crossed boundaries of smartphones and expanded
its reach to variety of other devices

Today we have
o

Android for phones and tabs

Android Wear

Android TV

Android Auto

IDEs

Android Development is can be carried out in either of the following IDEs

Eclipse (JUNO)

https://dl.google.com/android/adt/adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20140702.zip

Obsolete, but easier to set-up and better support

Support to be terminated in December, 2015

Android Studio
o

https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Newer, but tricky to set-up and lesser support

Under active development by Google

Links / Resources

Many YouTube tutorial series are available on Android App Development (also
check MyFTP)

Source codes, explanations

developer.android.com

androidhive.com

Video tutorials
o

TheNewBoston

SlideNerd

Udacity

And then theres Google..