Android Os
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Android OS: A robust, free, open-source operating system for mobile devices
Paul Michael Kilgo
Abstract Mobile devices have seen an extensive amount of development in recent years, but one question is still looming and nobody seems to have the answer: what is ’standard’ for the mobile platform? Many companies have already written their own in-house operating systems for the devices they manufacture such as Symbian or iPhone OS. However, with the existence of so many closed-source operating systems, no rational company would want to disclose their secrets and lose their edge on the competition. This presents a problem where software developers can’t write their code to be generalized. The Android team hopes to solve this on two levels. Firstly, it seeks to arrive at a common open-source operating system that any mobile device can run on. Secondly, it seeks to make developing applications for these mobile phones more general and hardware-agnostic.
I. Falling back on the traditional open-source method OMMONLY, the problem that most any computing platform will have is interoperability, and one of the worst places to run into this problem is in a situation where the user has little to no control over what operating system they use. Eventually, software developers will label one platform obsolete and refuse to develop for it any more. So how can an expandable, compatible operating system that can be used on many architectures be created? Android OS attempts to solve this problem by building on existing technologies like Linux and applying them to the mobile device. Android OS is free to use, improvable, and designed with multiple hardware implementations. Best of all, it is open source, so any necessary changes that need to be made can be performed as low as the kernel level. Android OS is already catching the public eye since it carries the Google namesake, but still has yet to reach its full potential. II. Humble beginnings Four years ago, almost nobody had
Android OS: A robust, free, open-source operating system for mobile devices
Paul Michael Kilgo
Abstract Mobile devices have seen an extensive amount of development in recent years, but one question is still looming and nobody seems to have the answer: what is ’standard’ for the mobile platform? Many companies have already written their own in-house operating systems for the devices they manufacture such as Symbian or iPhone OS. However, with the existence of so many closed-source operating systems, no rational company would want to disclose their secrets and lose their edge on the competition. This presents a problem where software developers can’t write their code to be generalized. The Android team hopes to solve this on two levels. Firstly, it seeks to arrive at a common open-source operating system that any mobile device can run on. Secondly, it seeks to make developing applications for these mobile phones more general and hardware-agnostic.
I. Falling back on the traditional open-source method OMMONLY, the problem that most any computing platform will have is interoperability, and one of the worst places to run into this problem is in a situation where the user has little to no control over what operating system they use. Eventually, software developers will label one platform obsolete and refuse to develop for it any more. So how can an expandable, compatible operating system that can be used on many architectures be created? Android OS attempts to solve this problem by building on existing technologies like Linux and applying them to the mobile device. Android OS is free to use, improvable, and designed with multiple hardware implementations. Best of all, it is open source, so any necessary changes that need to be made can be performed as low as the kernel level. Android OS is already catching the public eye since it carries the Google namesake, but still has yet to reach its full potential. II. Humble beginnings Four years ago, almost nobody had
References: [1] Ben Elgin, “Google buys android for its mobile arsenal,” http://www.businessweek.com/ technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm, August 2005. [2] John Cox, “Why google’s gphone won’t kill apple’s iphone,” http://www.networkworld.com/ news/2007/100807-google-gphone-iphone.html, October 2007. [3] Mike Cleron, “Androidology: Architecture overview,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= Mm6Ju0xhUW8, November 2007. [4] Josh Aas, “Understanding the linux 2.6.8.1 cpu scheduler,” Retrieved from http://www. angelfire.com/folk/citeseer/linux_scheduler.pdf, February 2005. [5] Charles Manning and Wookey, YAFFS Specifications, Aleph One, Bottisham, UK, version 0.3 edition, February 2002, Retrieved from http://www.yaffs.net/yaffs-spec. [6] Google, Mountain View, CA, Radio Layer Interface, March 2009, See path ’/development/pdk/docs/telephony.html’ in Android source tree. [7] Ryan Gardner, “Multi-touch proof-of-concept,” http://ryebrye.com/files/multitouch_ archive.zip, November 2008, With instructions at http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/2008/ 11/30/g1-multitouch-proof-of-concept-soure-code-posted/. [8] Open Handset Alliance, “Android overview,” http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/ android_overview.html. Paul Kilgo was born in Tuscaloosa, AL in 1989. He entered the University of Alabama in the Fall of 2007 and is pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science and Physics with a minor in Mathematics. His interests in the field include artificial intelligence as applied in video games and robotics, the mobile platform as a video game medium, human language processing, procedurally-generated content, and computer graphics.