Sneak Peek On Android Features, Scope and Training

Android dominates hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around the world. It is the largest installed base of any mobile platform and growing fast- everyday.  Millions of users power up their android devices for the first time and start looking for apps, games and other digital content. By Q2 2012 according to the research firm IDC, Android has a 68% share of the global Smartphone market

Some of the features include - 

1) Android gives a world class platform for creating apps and games for android users as well as distributing them.

2) Android users download more than 1.5 billion apps and games from Google Play each month.

3) It has a powerful development framework. It easily optimizes a single binary for phones, tablets and other devices. Android developer tools offer a full Java IDE with advanced features for developing, debugging and packaging Android apps. Using the IDE, one can develop on any available android devices or create virtual device that emulate any hardware configuration.

4)  Android consists of a kernel based on the Linux Kernel 2.6 and Linux kernel 3.x (Android 4.0 onwards) with middleware, libraries and APIs written in C and application software running on an application framework which includes Java compatible libraries based on Apache Harmony.

5)  Android has a rapid release cycle with new major versions being released every six to nine months. Between each major release minor interim releases are made available as often as necessary to fix security issues and other software bugs.

6)   Security- Android application run into a sandbox, an isolated area of the operating system that does not have access to the rest of the system’s resources , unless access permissions are granted by the users when the application is installed. The sandboxing and permissions systems weaken the impact of vulnerabilities and bugs in applications.

7)  Android smart phones have the ability to report the location of Wi-Fi access points, encountered as phone users move around, to build databases containing the physical locations of hundreds of millions of such access points.

8) Open source Community- Android has an active community of developers who use the android source code to develop and distribute their own modified versions of the operating system.

Other Features includes:

Application Framework that enables reuse and replacement of components

 Optimized Graphics that is powered by customized 2D graphics library and 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification

 Media Support for common video, audio, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)

Provision of Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi

SQLite for structured data storage

Open source WebKit engine based integrated web browser

Camera, GPS, Compass, and Accelerometer (dependent on hardware support)

Android's outstanding features are that developers can get complete access to the identical framework APIs as used by the core applications. Besides this the app architecture is so designed so as to make the reuse of components simpler and the capabilities of any application can be published and used by any other app subject to the relevant security constraints. The users can also replace the components using the same mechanism.

 

Scope of Android Developers in the near future

There lies lots of scopes and opportunities for software developers and application developers to make a career in this field. Android is an operating system specially designed for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers. And it is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. To be an apps developer, one needs to be trained in software development. The Android platform today has built outstanding careers in technology innovation and application development. Since it's open source, the scope to learn and work is infinite. For a software developer with excellent depth in algorithms, who can think out of the box, Android will be the best thing to happen. It is no surprise that Android keeps adding the largest pool of developers worldwide each day.

Need of training to become an Android Developer

The biggest benefit of Android training is that one gets to work with a qualified and experienced Android developer. Application development is mixture of science and creativity. An experienced trainer can guide a fresher candidate in developing Android development style and also help them if they make any mistake that new developers may make. An application developer of Android in order to survive the tough competition from the other developers should have very sound and exhaustive knowledge about the application features and operating technology of the Android devices. The Android application developers also need to be original  in their thinking and development approach and should resort to a strategic approach for this purpose The developers should also recommend quick and effective solutions as per the need of the user.