Operating System: The Power of Android

After good response from the users using Symbian, iOS and Windows there came into market a new Operating System called as Android. This paper gives information about the Android operating system, its existence, different versions, its features and its development. Unlike iOS, Android is an open source platform based on LINUX kernel, made available to everyone for development purpose to use it freely which was announced by Google. Hence, there are lots of things that can be done on this OS platform as per the user requirement. Different mobile companies uses Android as their OS platform and have their own custom ROM and GUI for consumer attraction and easy to use. Thus, Android came into the market and had opened doors to the developers to develop new software on new operating system. The Android market has competed with the iOS market within a very less time. They have consistently improved with its features that are easily interfacing with hardware. The paper intend to tell us the importance and in depth knowledge of an operating platform that is currently running on billions of smartphones at present. It is the most widely used OS. According to one of the press release, Android devices sell more than Windows, iOS combined as of sales in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The paper also touches with the requirement and development of applications or software based on Android platform with a basic example for beginners in this field. It also covers the APIs and firmware and Software Development Kit (SDK) and Eclipse.