ANDROID HISTORY
Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV) to develop, in Rubin's words "smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences". The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, when it was realised that the market for the devices was not large enough, and diverted their efforts to producing a smartphone operating system to rival those of Symbian and Windows Mobile (Apple's iPhone had not been released at the time). Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly, revealing only that it was working on software for mobile phones. That same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope and refused a stake in the company.
Google acquired Android Inc. on August 17, 2005, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Key employees of Android Inc., including Rubin, Miner and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition. Not much was known about Android Inc. at the time, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market with this move. At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. Google had lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part.
Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to build through December 2006. Reports from the BBC and the Wall Street Journal noted that Google wanted its search and applications on mobile phones and it was working hard to deliver that. Print and online media outlets soon reported rumors that Google was developing a Google-branded handset. Some speculated that as Google was defining technical specifications, it was showing prototypes to cell phone manufacturers and network operators. In September 2007,InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony.
On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies including Google, device manufacturers such as HTC, Sonyand Samsung, wireless carriers such as Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, and chipset makers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, unveiled itself, with a goal to develop open standards for mobile devices. That day, Android was unveiled as its first product, a mobile device platform built on theLinux kernel version 2.6. The first commercially available phone to run Android was the HTC Dream, released on October 22, 2008.
In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices — a line of smartphones and tablets running the Android operating system, and built by a manufacturer partner. HTC collaborated with Google to release the first Nexus smartphone, the Nexus One. The series has since been updated with newer devices, such as the Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 10 tablet, made by LG and Samsung respectively. Google releases the Nexus phones and tablets to act as their flagship Android devices, demonstrating Android's latest software and hardware features. On March 13, 2013, it was announced by Larry Page in a blog post that Andy Rubin had moved from the Android division to take on new projects at Google. He was replaced by Sundar Pichai, who also continues his role as the head of Google's Chrome division, which develops Chrome OS.
Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have incrementally improved the operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases. Each major release is named in alphabetical order after a dessert or sugary treat; for example, version 1.5 Cupcake was followed by 1.6 Donut. The latest released version is 4.4 KitKat that was released on October 31, 2013.
Applications
Android has a growing selection of third party applications, which can be acquired by users either through an app store such as Google Play or the Amazon Appstore, or by downloading and installing the application's APK file from a third-party site.The Play Store application allows users to browse, download and update apps published by Google and third-party developers, and is pre-installed on devices that comply with Google's compatibility requirements. The app filters the list of available applications to those that are compatible with the user's device, and developers may restrict their applications to particular carriers or countries for business reasons. Purchases of unwanted applications can be refunded within 15 minutes of the time of download, and some carriers offer direct carrier billing for Google Play application purchases, where the cost of the application is added to the user's monthly bill. As of September 2012, there were more than 675,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from the Play Store was 25 billion.
Applications are developed in the Java language using the Android software development kit (SDK). The SDK includes a comprehensive set of development tools,including a debugger, software libraries, a handset emulator based on QEMU, documentation, sample code, and tutorials. The officially supported integrated development environment (IDE) is Eclipse using the Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin. Other development tools are available, including a Native Development Kit for applications or extensions in C or C++, Google App Inventor, a visual environment for novice programmers, and various cross platform mobile web applications frameworks.
In order to work around limitations on reaching Google services due to Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, Android devices sold in the PRC are generally customized to use state approved services insted.
Android versions
Cupcake
updating 4.4
we can update some mobiles by OMNI ROM where some mobiles have to been update by this rom
like s3 etc
its going to be rooled out in india in few days.
but to update by omni rom is little bit difficult to change it because we have to change the ROM.
this is for updating s3 4.4.
And there is a dought in getting OTA [One The Air] for s3 and other devices.
but to update by omni rom is little bit difficult to change it because we have to change the ROM.
this is for updating s3 4.4.
And there is a dought in getting OTA [One The Air] for s3 and other devices.
