Android Architecture

To start an Android user you may know how the fundamental function is such as making a call, sending a text message, changing the system settings, install and uninstall apps or setup and delete etc. Android users know these things but not enough for an android application developer. So, what else details are a developer required to know about Android. To be an android apps developer you should know all the key concepts of Android such as all the nuts and bolts of Android Operating System.

The illustration shows us the Android Architecture System. The Android OS can be referred to as a software stack of different layers, where each layer is a group of several  program components. Together it includes operating system, middle ware and important applications. Every layer in the architecture provides different types of services. The services are :

Linux Kernel

For the most part, developing your device drivers is the same as developing a typical Linux device driver. Android uses a specialized version of the Linux kernel with a few special additions such as wakelocks, a memory management system that is more agressive in preserving memory, the Binder IPC driver, and other features that are important for a mobile embedded platform like Android. These additions have less to do with driver development than with the system's functionality. You can use any version of the kernel that you want as long as it supports the required features, such as the binder driver. However, we recommend using the latest version of the Android kernel. For the latest Android kernel, see Building Kernels.

Libraries

The next layer is the Android’s native libraries. It is this layer that enables the device to handle different types of data. These libraries are written in c or c++ language and are specific for a particular hardware.

Some of the important native libraries include the following:

Surface Manager: It is used for compositing window manager with off-screen buffering. Off-screen buffering means you cant directly draw into the screen, but your drawings go to the off-screen buffer. There it is combined with other drawings and form the final screen the user will see. This off screen buffer is the reason behind the transparency of windows.

Media framework: Media framework provides different media codecs allowing the recording and playback of different media formats

SQLite: SQLite is the database engine used in android for data storage purposes

WebKit: It is the browser engine used to display HTML content

OpenGL: Used to render 2D or 3D graphics content to the screen

Android Runtime

Android Runtime consists of Dalvik Virtual machine and Core Java libraries.

Dalvik Virtual Machine
It is a type of JVM used in android devices to run apps and is optimized for low processing power and low memory environments. Unlike the JVM, the Dalvik Virtual Machine doesn’t run .class files, instead it runs .dex files. .dex files are built from .class file at the time of compilation and provides hifger efficiency in low resource environments. The Dalvik VM allows multiple instance of Virtual machine to be created simultaneously providing security, isolation, memory management and threading support. It is developed by Dan Bornstein of Google.

Core Java Libraries
These are different from Java SE and Java ME libraries. However these libraries provides most of the functionalities defined in the Java SE libraries.

Application Framework

These are the blocks that our applications directly interacts with. These programs manage the basic functions of phone like resource management, voice call management etc. As an android apps developer, you just consider these are some basic tools with which we are building our applications.

Important blocks of Application framework are:

Activity Manager: Manages the activity life cycle of applications

Content Providers: Manage the data sharing between applications

Telephony Manager: Manages all voice calls. We use telephony manager if we want to access voice calls in our application.

Location Manager: Location management, using GPS or cell tower

Resource Manager: Manage the various types of resources we use in our Application

Applications

Applications are the top layer in the Android architecture and this is where our applications are go to fit. Several standard applications comes pre-installed with every device, such as:

• SMS client app
• Dialer
• Web browser
• Contact manager

As an android application developer we are able to write an app which replace any existing system app. That is, you are not limited in accessing any particular feature. You are practically limitless, and you can do whatever you want to do with the android. Android is an opening endless opportunities to the android application developer.