For a long time, cell phone developers comprised a small sect of a slightly larger group of developers known as embedded device developers. Embedded device manufacturers typically needed to guard their hardware secrets closely, so they gave embedded device developers few libraries to call when trying to interact with a specific device. Embedded device differ from desktops in that an embedded deivce is typically a computer on a chip.
Most embedded devices can ran and in some cases still run proprietary operating systems. The reason for choosing to create a proprietary operating system rather than use any consumer system was really a product of necessity. Simple devices did not need very robust and optimized operating systems.
Device manufacturers still closely guard the operating systems that run on their devices. While a few have opened up to the point where they will allow som Java-based applications to run within a small environment on the phone, many do not allow this. This barrier to application development began to crumble in 2007 when google, under the Open Handset Alliance released Android.
Android, as a system, is a Java-based operating that runs on the Linux 2.6 kernel. The system is very lightweight and full feature. Android Applications are developed using Java and can be ported rather easily to the new platform. If you have not yet downloaded Java or are unsure about which version you need, you can find the information on Google's special page.
Other features of Android include an accelerated 3-D graphics engine which based on hardware support, database support powered by SQLite, and an integrated web browser.
One of the more exciting and compelling features of android is that, because of its architecture third-party applications including those that are home grown are executed with the same system priority as those that are bundled with the core system. Also, each application is executed within its own thread using a very lightweight virtual machine.
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