Android mobile operating system was a hot topic among mobile application developers as well as general community in past few years. It attracted developers since it a total free and open source operating system which is JAVA programming language based and due to the availability of free applications, it attracted general users. There are various smart phones which are having the Google android as its operating system and most of them were manufactured by well known companies including HTC, Sony Ericson, Samsung and Motorola. Those sophisticated devices were gaining the popularity among the other market competitors with their smooth snappy performance. Now the Google android OS is taking its steps to deal with the new trend of ‘Tablet’ mobile devices.
Android OS
History
The development of Android OS was started by Android Inc in 2005. Then the company was taken over by Google after that by Open Handset Alliance. The core of the Android OS is a modified version of Linux Kernel and it provide platform to develop it using JAVA Programming language. The first announcement of Android Distribution was made on 5th November of 2007. At this moment there are so many industry giants working in Android project including Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Samsung, Nvidia and Sony Ericson.
Features
The most attractive feature in Android OS is its GUI. It provides highly comprehensive extensible GUI to the user with Open GL based 3D graphics. It supports all the modern wireless connectivity technologies. When it comes to the storage the developer can use relational database in the mobile device like in a personal computer with the aid of SQLite. When it comes to the multimedia it provides encoding to all the common media formats. The multi point touch screen enhances the user experience along with advance voice recognitions system. Most importantly it supports JAVA programming languages with multitasking. The SDK is released to developers for free. Therefore users can install freely available millions of applications on it.
The ‘Tablet’ Trend
The ‘Tablet’ trend was initially started with laptop computers couple of years ago. Those laptop devices provide 180 degrees rotatable LCD display with multipoint touch screen. Therefore it could be used as a traditional laptop computer as well as a tablet PC when the screen it rotated. The well known manufactures for these devices were HP and Samsung. After that the laptops and tablet devices were going on different specialized paths. Most of the tablet devices introduced after that was having a single-block design with large multi point touch screen. The trend of tablet devices was further stimulated with the mobile Gaming industry. The traditional mobile phone screen was way too smaller to play games and Laptop is not enough portable for that. The tablet devices gave a perfect solution for this problem with the improvement of 3D rendering hardware infrastructure in them. Furthermore people don’t like to read a book on a Computer screen. It never gave the real sensation of reading a real paper book. With the trend of Tablet devices the era of E book reborn with new energy since the readers could have almost a ‘real book’ like device to read e books. With the arrival of Apple iPad the tablet trend was a day to day hot topic among every one.
Features Of Android Tablets
Acer Prototype
One of the most noticeable prototypes has been demonstrated by Acer. The article about this was made online by Shufflegazine. According to that the device 7 inches display with 2GB memory. Most importantly as seen in the photographs of demonstration it’s equipped with a real physical keyboard. This will be good news for many people who don’t like to use on screen touch keyboard.
Samsung Galaxy Tab
According to another unofficial sources Samsung also about to release a Tablet PC. The market of the device appears to be ‘Samsung Galaxy Tab’. Furthermore it will be having high resolution 7 inches TFT display and front facing camera.
Dell Mini 5
There is an official report about another Android powered tablet device which is ‘Dell Mini 5’. It’s having 5 inches display with multi point touch sensor. The wireless connective will be provided through SIM card, so it appears to be supporting all the modern wireless technologies. In addition to that its having Wi-Fi connectivity as well. The Android OS versions used for this prototype is 1.6. Most importantly when it comes to image capturing, the device is equipped with 2 cameras, One 5 MP camera on rear panel and front VGA camera for video calling.
Archos 5 Android Internet Table
Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet is already available tablet device in market. It’s available in 2 versions which is having 16GB and 32GB. The processor is 430MHz ARM Cortex-A8 and display size is 5 inches. This is having highly portable design and having great multimedia capabilities including 720p high definitions video playback. Additionally it is having built in GPS receiver as well.
The Android mobile OS provide a versatile platform for all the above Tablet devices to deliver those exceptional features to the user. In near future there will be even greater devices with further improved hardware capabilities. Most importantly there will be improved 3D graphic and it will support advance gamming on Android Tables. Furthermore due to the JAVA programming language support there will be even wider free and open source application range. Most importantly the Android OS uses an advance mechanism to run JAVA applications without the support of traditional JVM, so it will save the devices battery life.
Competitors
The most significant competitor to the Android OS is Apple mobile OS which comes with iPhone and iPad. It was gaining its popularity due to the highly improved user interfaces and great multimedia capabilities. Furthermore in Apple app store there are more than 200, 000 of applications available to download. Even with all these Android OS can gain the advantage due to few reasons. The main reason is its free and open source. Due to that there will be millions of applications available written using JAVA programming language. Apparently the GUI in Android OS is almost good as Apple interface. In this moment Apple seems to be the market dominant tablet device OS. But in near future Android OS will take that place due to its limitless capabilities of free and open source development.
Next Chapter
All the open source development gets mature with the time. So the next chapter of Android mobile OS is pretty unpredictable. It’s already having the entire comprehensive featured required for a Tablet devices as well as any mobile device. Furthermore it has special mechanism to reduce the power consumption when it’s running third party JAVA applications. The next expected development would be the performance improvement and it will be a continuous process. Since most of the mobile devices have limited hardware resources, this will be a curtail factor for the success of Tablet OS. Other than that the next most important factor would be wireless security. Even in current versions Android OS provides advance encryptions and secured protocols to transfer data. Since the devices are always connected to various wireless networks this may need to be further improved. The gaming support of the OS is another expected development in future versions. The revolution of Android powered Tabled devices is upon us. The next surprise of Android OS is not so far as it seems.
References
- Android, C. (2010, February). Dell Mini 5 Android Tablet gets FCC approved. Retrieved June 2010, from canadianandroid.com: http://www.canadianandroid.com/b/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dell-internet-tablet-slate-announced-6.jpg
- Edgar, J. A. (2009, November). Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet: First Impressions. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2009/11/11/archos-5-android-internet-tablet-first-impressions/
- Hannaford, K. (2010, June). Leaked Photo of Samsung Galaxy Tab Shows 7-Inch Android Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from gizmodo.com: http://gizmodo.com/5554446/leaked-photo-of-samsung-galaxy-tab-shows-7+inch-android-tablet
- Nystedt, M. (2010, May). Acer CEO shows off 7-inch Android tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from www.shufflegazine.com: http://www.shufflegazine.com/2010/05/27/acer-ceo-shows-of-7-inch-android-tablet/
- Perez, A. (2010, January). Dell Announces Android Powered Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2010/01/08/dell-announces-android-powered-tablet/
Tags: #Android #OS #Tablet