Android Development

Android is an operating system based on Linux with a Java programming interface. The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) provides all necessary tools to develop Android applications. This includes a compiler, debugger and a device emulator, as well as its own virtual machine to run Android programs. Android is currently primarily developed by Google. Android allows background processing, provides a rich user interface library, supports 2-D and 3-D graphics using the OpenGL libraries, access to the file system and provides an embedded SQLite database. Android applications consist of different components and can re-use components of other applications. This leads to the concept of a task in Android; an application can re-use other Android components to archive a task. For example you can trigger from your application another application which has itself registered with the Android system to handle photos. In this other application you select a photo and return to your application to use the selected photo.