It wasn't until last Sunday that I found out about that iPhone blogged and now Google shows that they did their homework. No, there is no gPhone as such, but Google is setting the tone with the mobile OS Android. Something is happening in the cell phone market and Google is changing the world with this open source OS. Following the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance, Google has now presented details on its Android mobile phone platform and the previously announced Software Development Kit (SDK). WebKit as a browser, SQLite as a database and Java for application development are just a few cornerstones, and developers can now create Android applications with them. Android uses various open source technologies and combines them into one platform.
Android is a complete operating system based on Linux 2.6 for mobile phones including an application framework, a virtual machine (VM) called “Dalvik” that has been specially optimized for mobile devices. Each Android application runs in its own process within its own instance of DalvikVM. The virtual machine was designed so that several VMs can easily work in parallel. Files are executed in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format, which has been optimized for low memory consumption. In addition, classes that were created with a Java compiler and converted into the .dex format can be executed in the VM.
The System C library used was derived from the BSD variant of Libc and optimized for embedded devices. FreeType takes care of the display of fonts and the 2D library SGL is used for graphics acceleration and an implementation of OpenGL ES 3 for 1.0D graphics. The integrated browser is based on Apple's WebKit and data is stored in a structured manner in the SQLite database engine. Each application can be linked to any one, whereby third-party developers have the same APIs available as the device manufacturers.
In addition, Android supports telephony via GSM, Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G and WiFi as well as cameras, GPS and acceleration sensors. Audio and video can be displayed in MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG and GIF formats. Android is delivered with a number of basic applications, including an e-mail client, an SMS program, calendar, Google Maps, a browser and contact management, all of which were written in Java. The Android SDK is available now for download ready.