If you’ve been shopping for mobile phones or other mobile devices, you’ve probably heard of Android. It’s the new open source operating system for mobile devices. Only last week I was shown a iphone look-alike that ran Android and it’s proud owner demonstrated all the amazing things it could do for me. I was impressed.
But mobile devices running Android are only a small part of this ambitious project. Watch today’s video to see the developers talk about what Android can do and how they see the future for this OS (Operating System). It’s a little technical but worth watching. The developers want to see Android used everywhere, so they’ve made it easy for the industry to adopt. There are no licence conditions. It’s free. And it’s easy for application developers to extend it and create new functionality.
Android has several layers of software. At it’s core it’s a Linux kernel, with an application framework on top and all of the applications on top of that. Linux is a solid, reliable operating system and has been optimised for mobile devices and the different conditions they work under; battery power, small display, etc.
The developers have also added codecs for audio and video, 2-D and 3-D graphics, speech recognition and many other features. And included is a web browser, email client, instant messaging, camera controls, dialer and contact database. And there is so much more in the pipeline too.
I think we will see a lot more of Android in lots of new products.
