Android (operating system)

Android

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android's user interface is mainly based on direct manipulation, using touch gestures that loosely correspond to real-world actions, such as swiping, tapping and pinching, to manipulate on-screen objects, along with a virtual keyboard for text input. In addition to touchscreen devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, and Android Wear for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are also used on game consoles, digital cameras, PCs and other electronics.

Initially developed by Android Inc., which Google bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007, along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance – a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Beginning with the first commercial Android device in September 2008, the operating system has gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 8.0 "Oreo", released in August 2017. Android applications ("apps") can be downloaded from the Google Play store, which features over 2.7 million apps as of February 2017. Android has been the best-selling OS on tablets since 2013, and runs on the vast majority^[a] of smartphones. As of May 2017, Android has two billion monthly active users, and it has the largest installed base of any operating system.

Android's source code is released by Google under an open source license, although most Android devices ultimately ship with a combination of free and open source and proprietary software, including proprietary software required for accessing Google services. Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices. Its open nature has encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open-source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which deliver updates to older devices, add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices originally shipped with other operating systems. The extensive variation of hardware in Android devices causes significant delays for software upgrades, with new versions of the operating system and security patches typically taking months before reaching consumers, or sometimes not at all. The success of Android has made it a target for patent and copyright litigation between technology companies.

PLATFORM USAGE :- 

Charts in this section provide breakdowns of Android versions, based on devices accessing the Google Play Store in a seven-day period ending on December 11, 2017.^[350][c] Therefore, these statistics exclude devices running various Android forks that do not access the Google Play Store, such as Amazon's Fire tablets.

Version	Code name	Release date	API level	DVM/ART	Distribution	First devices to run version
8.1	Oreo	December 5, 2017	27	ART		Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 6P
8.0		August 21, 2017	26	ART	0.5%	N/A
7.1	Nougat	October 4, 2016	25	ART	4.0%	Pixel, Pixel XL
7.0		August 22, 2016	24	ART	19.3%	Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P
6.0	Marshmallow	October 5, 2015	23	ART	29.7%
5.1	Lollipop	March 9, 2015	22	ART	20.2%	Android One
5.0		November 3, 2014	21	ART 2.1.0	6.1%	Nexus 6, Nexus 9
4.4	KitKat	October 31, 2013	19	DVM (and ART 1.6.0)	13.4%	Nexus 5
4.3	Jelly Bean	July 24, 2013	18	DVM	0.9%	Nexus 7 2013
4.2		November 13, 2012	17	DVM	3.0%	Nexus 4, Nexus 10
4.1		July 9, 2012	16	DVM	2.0%	Nexus 7
4.0	Ice Cream Sandwich	October 19, 2011	15	DVM	0.5%	Galaxy Nexus
2.3	Gingerbread	February 9, 2011	10	DVM 1.4.0	0.4%	Nexus S

As of 2017, more than 60% of devices have OpenGL ES 3.0 or higher.

Both Android and Android phone manufacturers have been involved in numerous patent lawsuits. On August 12, 2010, Oracle sued Google over claimed infringement of copyrights and patents related to the Java programming language.^[357] Oracle originally sought damages up to $6.1 billion,^[358] but this valuation was rejected by a United States federal judge who asked Oracle to revise the estimate In response, Google submitted multiple lines of defense, counterclaiming that Android did not infringe on Oracle's patents or copyright, that Oracle's patents were invalid, and several other defenses. They said that Android's Java runtime environment is based on Apache Harmony, a clean room implementation of the Java class libraries, and an independently developed virtual machine called Dalvik In May 2012, the jury in this case found that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents, and the trial judge ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable.The parties agreed to zero dollars in statutory damages for a small amount of copied code. On May 9, 2014, the Federal Circuit partially reversed the district court ruling, ruling in Oracle's favor on the copyrightability issue, and remanding the issue of fair use to the district court.

In December 2015, Google announced that the next major release of Android (Android Nougat) would switch to OpenJDK, which is the official open-source implementation of the Java platform, instead of using the now-discontinued Apache Harmony project as its runtime. Code reflecting this change was also posted to the AOSP source repository.^[179] In its announcement, Google claimed this was part of an effort to create a "common code base" between Java on Android and other platforms.^[180] Google later admitted in a court filing that this was part of an effort to address the disputes with Oracle, as its use of OpenJDK code is governed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) with a linking exception, and that "any damages claim associated with the new versions expressly licensed by Oracle under OpenJDK would require a separate analysis of damages from earlier releases".^[179] In June 2016, a United States federal court ruled in favor of Google, stating that its use of the APIs was fair use.

In addition to lawsuits against Google directly, various proxy wars have been waged against Android indirectly by targeting manufacturers of Android devices, with the effect of discouraging manufacturers from adopting the platform by increasing the costs of bringing an Android device to market.Both Apple and Microsoft have sued several manufacturers for patent infringement, with Apple's ongoing legal action against Samsung being a particularly high-profile case. In January 2012, Microsoft said they had signed patent license agreements with eleven Android device manufacturers, whose products account for "70 percent of all Android smartphones" sold in the US and 55% of the worldwide revenue for Android devices.These include Samsung and HTC. Samsung's patent settlement with Microsoft included an agreement to allocate more resources to developing and marketing phones running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Microsoft has also tied its own Android software to patent licenses, requiring the bundling of Microsoft Office Mobile and Skype applications on Android devices to subsidize the licensing fees, while at the same time helping to promote its software lines.

Google has publicly expressed its frustration for the current patent landscape in the United States, accusing Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of trying to take down Android through patent litigation, rather than innovating and competing with better products and services.In August 2011, Google purchased Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion, which was viewed in part as a defensive measure to protect Android, since Motorola Mobility held more than 17,000 patents.In December 2011, Google bought over a thousand patents from IBM.

In 2013, FairSearch, a lobbying organization supported by Microsoft, Oracle and others, filed a complaint regarding Android with the European Commission, alleging that its free-of-charge distribution model constituted anti-competitive predatory pricing. The Free Software Foundation Europe, whose donors include Google, disputed the Fairsearch allegations.On April 20, 2016, the EU filed a formal antitrust complaint against Google based upon the FairSearch allegations, arguing that its leverage over Android vendors, including the mandatory bundling of the entire suite of proprietary Google software, hindering the ability for competing search providers to be integrated into Android, and barring vendors from producing devices running forks of Android, constituted anti-competitive practices.In August 2016, Google was fined US$6.75 million by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) under similar allegations by Yandex.

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