Mobile Application Development with ANDROID

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Mobile Application Development with ANDROID
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Agenda

• Mobile Application Development (MAD)
• Intro to Android platform
• Platform architecture
• Application building blocks
• Development tools
• Hello Android
• SAM
• Resources

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Few reasons to go MAD

• Smart Phones
• Internet access anywhere
• Social networking
• Millions of mobile users
• Open standards

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Introduction to Android

• Open software platform for mobile development
• A complete stack OS, Middleware, Applications
• An Open Handset Alliance (OHA) project
• Powered by Linux operating system
• Fast application development in Java
• Open source under the Apache 2 license

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History of Android

• Google acquired the startup company Android Inc.
  in 2005 to start the development of the Android
  Platform. The key players at Android Inc.
  included Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and
  Chris White.
• In late 2007, a group of industry leaders came
  together around the Android Platform to form the
  Open Handset Alliance (http//www.openhandsetalli
  ance.com).
• The Android SDK was first issued as an early
  look release in November 2007.
• In September 2008 T-Mobile announced the
  availability of the T-Mobile G1, the first
  smartphone based on the Android Platform.
• A few days after that, Google announced the
  availability of Android SDK Release Candidate
  1.0.
• In October 2008, Google made the source code of
  the Android Platform available under Apaches
  open source license.

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History of Android
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Introduction to Android

• What is the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)?
• ? It's a consortium of several companies

Google Android
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Introduction to Android

• What is the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)?
• Devoted to advancing open standards for mobile
  devices
• Develop technologies that will significantly
  lower the cost of developing and distributing
  mobile devices and services
• An open standard is a standard that is publicly
  available and has various rights to use
  associated with it, and may also have various
  properties of how it was designed (e.g. open
  process). There is no single definition and
  interpretations do vary with usage.

Google Android
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Introduction to Android

• License
• Android is under version 2 of the Apache Software
  License (ASL)

Google Android
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Linux Kernel

• At the core of the Android Platform is Linux
  kernel version 2.6, responsible for device
  drivers, resource access, power management, and
  other OS duties. The supplied device drivers
  include Display, Camera, Keypad, WiFi, Flash
  Memory, Audio, and IPC (interprocess
  communication).

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Libraries

• The next level up contains the Android native
  libraries. They are all written in C/C
  internally, but youll be calling them through
  Java interfaces. In this layer you can find a
  number libraries such as OpenGL, WebKit,
  FreeType, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the C
  runtime library (libc), SQLite and Media.

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Libraries

• The media libraries are based on PacketVideos
  (http//www.packetvideo.com/) OpenCORE. These
  libraries are responsible for recording and
  playback of audio and video formats. A library
  called Surface Manager controls access to the
  display system and supports 2D and 3D.
• The WebKit library is responsible for browser
  support it is the same library that supports
  Google Chrome and Apple Inc.s Safari. The
  FreeType library is responsible for font support.
  SQLite (http//www.sqlite.org/) is a relational
  database that is available on the device itself.
  SQLite is also an independent open source effort
  for relational databases and not directly tied to
  Android. You can acquire and use tools meant for
  SQLite for Android databases as well.

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Android Runtime

• Dalvik VM
• Dex files
• Compact and efficient than class files
• Limited memory and battery power
• Core Libraries
• Java 5 Std edition
• Collections, I/O etc

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Application Framework

• API interface
• Activity manager manages application life cycle.

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Applications

• Built in and user apps such as Home, Contacts,
  Phone, Browser, and so on
• Can replace built in apps

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Agenda

• Mobile Application Development (MAD)
• Intro to Android platform
• Platform architecture
• Application building blocks
• Development tools
• Hello Android
• SAM
• Resources

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Application Building Blocks

• Activity
• IntentReceiver
• Service
• ContentProvider

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Activities

• Typically correspond to one UI screen
• But, they can
• Be faceless
• Be in a floating window
• Return a value

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IntentReceivers

• Components that respond to broadcast Intents
• Way to respond to external notification or alarms
• Apps can invent and broadcast their own Intent

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Intents

• Think of Intents as a verb and object a
  description of what you want done
• E.g. VIEW, CALL, PLAY etc..
• System matches Intent with Activity that can best
  provide the service
• Activities and IntentReceivers describe what
  Intents they can service

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Intents
Home
Picasa
Photo Gallery
Contacts
Pick photo
GMail
Client component makes a request for a specific
action
System picks best component for that action
Chat
New components can use existing functionality
Blogger
Blogger
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Services

• Faceless components that run in the background
• E.g. music player, network download etc

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ContentProviders

• Enables sharing of data across applications
• E.g. address book, photo gallery
• Provides uniform APIs for
• querying
• delete, update and insert.
• Content is represented by URI and MIME type

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Agenda

• Mobile Application Development (MAD)
• Intro to Android platform
• Platform architecture
• Application building blocks
• Development tools
• Hello Android
• SAM
• Resources

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Development Tools

• Eclipse
• Android SDK
• developer.android.com

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The Emulator

• QEMU-based ARM emulator
• Runs the same image as the device
• Limitations
• No Camera support

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Devices
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Hello World

• Generating UIs
• Views building blocks
• E.g. TextView, EditText, Button
• Placed into Layouts
• E.g. LinearLayout, TableLayout, AbsoluteLayout

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SAM Demo
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Interesting things to do

• Android is open source
• Opportunities for researchers
• Get the source, compile and update the device
  image

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References

• http//developer.android.com
• http//sites.google.com/site/io