Some Look at Google Phone, Google Andoid

Google Phones: Not the Handset but mobile Operating System Called Android    

Is Google jumps to the mobiles and hardware market??????

In 2007, people began to circulate rumours that the Google Corporation would introduce a smartphone to compete with Apple's iPhone. Speculation ran rampant -- would Google get into the hardware business? Would the company rely on established cell phone manufacturers for hardware? Would Google simply concentrate on building smartphone applications for other devices like the iPhone?

Google executives claimed that the company wasn't interested in building hardware. But some Web journalists and bloggers remained unconvinced. By early 2008, it became clear that the Google executives had been straightforward all along -- Google was not getting into the handset hardware game. But they were getting into the handset software business with a mobile operating system (OS) called Android.

The first Google phone was the G1, a handset manufactured by a company based in Taiwan called the High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC). The first service provider to support Android in the United States was T-Mobile.

An important factor that sets Android apart from most other mobile OS is that it's based on an open source platform, Google allows anyone to look at and modify most of Android's source code. Ideally, this would mean that if a developer felt Android needed a specific feature or capability, he or she could build it and incorporate it into the OS. The software would constantly evolve.

As hardware becomes more advanced, Google will tweak the Android OS to support new features and functions. And if Google doesn't do it, someone else will. That's the beauty of an open-source system.

You can divide the features of the HTC G1 (the first phone to run on the Android platform) into two categories: hardware features and Android features. Remember, not every phone running on Android will have the same capabilities as other Android phones. Some of those features are built directly into the hardware and can vary from one manufacturer to the next.

 CEO of google has says: there are 2,00,000 piece of Android phones are  sold per day in no of month from its launch

Google Android Architecture:

Android OS as a software stack.

àEach layer of the stack groups together several programs that support specific operating system functions. The base of the stack is the kernel. Google used the Linux version 2.6 OS to build Android's kernel, which includes Android's memory management programs, security settings, power management software and several hardware drivers. Drivers are programs that control hardware devices. For example, the HTC G1 has a camera. The Android kernel includes a camera driver, which allows the user to send commands to the camera hardware.

àThe next level of software includes Android's libraries. You can think of libraries as a set of instructions that tell the device how to handle different kinds of data.

àLocated on the same level as the libraries layer, the Android runtime layer includes a set of core Java libraries -- Android application programmers build their apps using the Java programming language. It also includes the Dalvik Virtual Machine.

àThe next layer is the application framework. This includes the programs that manage the phone's basic functions like resource allocation, telephone applications, switching between processes or programs and keeping track of the phone's physical location. Application developers have full access to Android's application framework

àAt the top of the stack are the applications themselves. This is where you find the basic functions of the device such as making phone calls, accessing the Web browser and accessing your contacts list.

Building Android Applications

àTo build an Android application, a developer has to be familiar with the Java programming language. The Developer can download the software developer kit (SDK) and get started. The SDK gives the developer access to Android's application programming interface (API).

·        Google breaks each Application into 4 parts as Activities, Intents, Services, Content provider.

The Android phone is already making an impact in the world of smartphones. But it may take a year or two for the operating system to gain a strong foothold in the marketplace. If that happens, Google might dominate the cell phone world the same way it has laid claim to online search.