Mike Chan, co-founder of phone maker Nextbit and former Android developer, said that “The best way to solve this problem is a massive re-architecture of the operating system”, “or Google could invest in training manufacturers and carriers ‘to be good Android citizens'”. As a result, Android 4.2 and 4.3 “Jelly Bean” contained relatively fewer user-facing changes, focusing more on minor changes and platform improvements. The lack of after-sale support from manufacturers and carriers has been widely criticized by consumer groups and the technology media. There are also situations in which upgrades are impossible due to a manufacturer not updating necessary drivers. In addition to running on smartphones and tablets, several vendors run Android natively on regular PC hardware with a keyboard and mouse. For example, as Android was developed initially as a phone OS, hardware such as microphones were required, while over time the phone function became optional.|One of the main causes was the chicken or the egg situation where consumers were hesitant to buy an Android tablet due to a lack of high quality tablet applications, but developers were hesitant to spend time and resources developing tablet applications until there was a significant market for them. According to StatCounter, Android is most used on phones in all African countries, and it stated “mobile usage has already overtaken desktop in several countries including India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia”, with all countries in Africa having done so already in which mobile (including tablets) usage is at 90.46% (Android only, accounts for 75.81% of all use there). As of August 2020,update the Google Play store had over 3 million Android applications published, and as of May 2016,update apps had been downloaded more than 65 billion times. As of May 2013,update 48 billion application (“app”) installation have been performed from the Google Play store, and by September 2013, one billion Android devices had been activated.}
Android 10 — конец десертных названий
The device would become the start of the Google Play edition program, and was followed by other devices, including the HTC One Google Play edition, and Moto G Google Play edition. During its announcement of Android KitKat in 2013, Google explained that “Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert”, although a Google spokesperson told CNN in an interview that “It’s kind of like an internal team thing, and we prefer to be a little bit—how should I say—a bit inscrutable in the matter, I’ll say”. The first two Android versions were internally codenamed Astro Boy and Bender but licensing issues meant subsequent releases were named after dessert or sugary treat in an alphabetical order, with the first few Android versions being called “Petit Four”, “Cupcake”, “Donut”, “Eclair”, and “Froyo”, in that order. In September 2007, Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony. Rubin pitched the Android project as having “tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences”.
Leverage over manufacturers
In 2020, Google launched the Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative to improve the security of Android. CyanogenMod was the most widely used community firmware; after its abrupt discontinuation in 2016, a community fork known as LineageOS was established as a spiritual continuation of the project. Android’s standard C library, Bionic, was developed by Google specifically for Android, as a derivation of the BSD’s standard C library code.
Android “Jelly Bean” introduced the ability for paid applications to be encrypted, so that they may work only on the device for which they were purchased. However, not every developer agreed that piracy rates were an issue; for example, in July 2012 the developers of the game Wind-up https://chickenroadapp.in/ Knight said that piracy levels of their game were only 12%, and most of the piracy came from China, where people cannot purchase apps from Google Play. At the same time 100.0% of the devices have support for OpenGL ES 2.0 or higher, 95.9% are on OpenGL ES 3.0 or higher, and 88.6% are using the latest version OpenGL ES 3.2. Android 15 is the most-used version on 3 continents, and many countries, including US/North America (38%), Europe, Asia, India, China and Japan. InfoWorld has suggested that some Android manufacturers initially treated their first tablets as a “Frankenphone business”, a short-term low-investment opportunity by placing a smartphone-optimized Android OS (before Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets was available) on a device while neglecting user interface. The content and app “ecosystem” proved more important than hardware specs as the selling point for tablets.
Within a year, the Open Handset Alliance faced two other open source competitors, the Symbian Foundation and the LiMo Foundation, the latter also developing a Linux-based mobile operating system like Google. Google had “lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation”.attribution needed At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Not much was known about the secretive Android Inc. at the time, with the company having provided few details other than that it was making software for mobile phones.
Заявления о нарушении прав от Oracle
The issue stems from the fact that many apps request permissions to access users’ personal information (even if this information is not needed for the app to function) and some users unquestionably grant these permissions. In August 2013, Google announced Android Device Manager (renamed Find My Device in May 2017), a service that allows users to remotely track, locate, and wipe their Android device, with an Android app for the service released in December. The new permissions model is used only by applications developed for Marshmallow using its software development kit (SDK), and older apps will continue to use the previous all-or-nothing approach. Originally only doing so during installation, Verify Apps received an update in 2014 to “constantly” scan apps, and in 2017 the feature was made visible to users through a menu in Settings. A “Verify Apps” feature was introduced in November 2012, as part of the Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean” operating system version, to scan all apps, both from Google Play and from third-party sources, for malicious behaviour.
Android
Now, the Cinnamon Bun name will most probably not appear in the public domain, but it could be a hint of what we may get to see in terms of design. AS reported by Cashify, Google’s upcoming operating system is codenamed Cinnamon Bun, putting a stamp on Google’s age-old tradition of naming the Android version after desserts. Contrary to reports that she was tasked with a project to create an icon, Blok confirmed in an interview that she independently developed it and made it open source.
In September 2014, Jason Nova of Android Authority reported on a study by the German security company Fraunhofer AISEC in antivirus software and malware threats on Android. In Android 6.0 “Marshmallow”, the permissions system was changed; apps are no longer automatically granted all of their specified permissions at installation time. Since February 2012, Google has used its Google Bouncer malware scanner to watch over and scan apps available in the Google Play store. It is not possible, for example, to turn off the microphone access of the pre-installed camera app without disabling the camera completely. Watchdog reported that more than a billion Android devices released in 2012 or earlier, which was 40% of Android devices worldwide, were at risk of being hacked.
They maintain this forces Android developers to write for the “lowest common denominator” to reach as many users as possible, who have too little incentive to make use of the latest hardware or software features only available on a smaller percentage of devices. Android has suffered from “fragmentation”, a situation where the variety of Android devices, in terms of both hardware variations and differences in the software running on them, makes the task of developing applications that work consistently across the ecosystem harder than rival platforms such as iOS where hardware and software varies less. Microsoft has also tied its own Android software to patent licenses, requiring the bundling of Microsoft Office Mobile and Skype applications on Android devices to subsidize the licensing fees, while at the same time helping to promote its software lines. Usage of Android 13 and newer, i.e. supported versions, is at 61%, the rest of users are not supported with security updates; with recently supported Android 12 (last security updates in 2025), use is at 73%. Critics such as Apple Insider have asserted that fragmentation via hardware and software pushed Android’s growth through large volumes of low end, budget-priced devices running older versions of Android.
In 2019, Google was fined €50 Million by the French CNIL for a lack of information regarding their users. This is a feature in the Linux kernel that allows for transparent integrity checking of block devices. Android (all supported versions, as far back as version 4.4 of the Android Open Source Project) has the option to provide a verified boot chain with dm-verity. The Android Open Source Project implements a verified boot chain with intentions to verify that executed code, such as the kernel or bootloader, comes from an official source instead of a malicious actor. Google promised to work with developers and create exceptions if their apps require Phone or SMS permissions for “core app functionality”.
While the core Android system remains free, OEMs in Europe would be required to purchase a paid license to the core suite of Google applications, such as Gmail, Google Maps and the Google Play Store. In 2010, Google released a tool for validating authorized purchases for use within apps, but developers complained that this was insufficient and trivial to crack. Since April 2024, 85.0% of devices have Vulkan graphics support (77.6% support Vulkan 1.1 or higher, thereof 6.6% supporting Vulkan 1.3), the successor to OpenGL. Usage of Android 13 and newer, i.e. supported versions, is at 41% on Android tablets, and with Android 12, until recently supported, at 51%.
Смартфоны Google и множества других разработчиков
- Android “Jelly Bean” introduced the ability for paid applications to be encrypted, so that they may work only on the device for which they were purchased.
- In 2012, Google began de-coupling certain aspects of the operating system (particularly its central applications) so they could be updated through the Google Play store independently of the OS.
- Leaked documents codenamed Vault 7 and dated from 2013 to 2016, detail the capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare, including the ability to compromise the operating systems of most smartphones (including Android).
Three billion Android smartphones were estimated to be sold by the end of 2014 (including previous years). At the end of 2013, over 1.5 billion Android smartphones had been sold in the four years since 2010, making Android the most sold phone and tablet OS. Android is the most used operating system on phones in many countries, with some countries, such as India, having over 96% market share.
- Google publishes most of the code (including network and telephony stacks) under the non-copyleft Apache License version 2.0.
- The platform is also focused on supporting developers with tools like ARCore and Unity to build applications for upcoming XR devices.
- At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel.
- On August 5, 2020, Twitter published a blog urging its users to update their applications to the latest version with regards to a security concern that allowed others to access direct messages.
- Other malware displays unwanted and intrusive advertisements on the device, or sends personal information to unauthorised third parties.
These applications must be licensed from Google by device makers, and can only be shipped on devices which meet its compatibility guidelines and other requirements. Google publishes most of the code (including network and telephony stacks) under the non-copyleft Apache License version 2.0. In response problem, several community-driven initiatives emerged to provide alternatives operating systems for unsupported devices including, like LineageOS, Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS.
Software stack
Internal hardware, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and proximity sensors are used by some applications to respond to additional user actions, for example adjusting the screen from portrait to landscape depending on how the device is oriented, or allowing the user to steer a vehicle in a racing game by rotating the device, simulating control of a steering wheel. Android is an operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Moreover, open-source variants of some applications also exclude functions that are present in their non-free versions. In March 2018, it was reported that Google had begun to block “uncertified” Android devices from using Google Mobile Services software, and display a warning indicating that “the device manufacturer has preloaded Google apps and services without certification from Google”. Alternatively, a permission might be listed in the app manifest as required (as opposed to optional) and the app would not install unless user grants the permission; users can withdraw any, even required, permissions from any app in the device settings after app installation, but few users do this. The vulnerability came by exploiting a bug in the multitasking system enabling a malicious app to overlay legitimate apps with fake login screens that users are not aware of when handing in security credentials.
Requirements for the minimum amount of RAM for smartphones running Android 15 range from 4 GB of RAM for full Android to 2 GB, in which case the smartphone manufacturers must use the Android Go Edition. Developer options are initially hidden since Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean”, but can be enabled by actuating the operating system’s build number in the device information seven times. Android 4.4 introduced the Storage Access Framework (SAF), a set of APIs for accessing files on the device’s filesystem. This has the disadvantage of preventing the memory card from being used with another device unless it is reformatted.
The dedicated option key, also known as menu key, and its on-screen simulation, is no longer supported since Android version 10. Along the top of the screen is a status bar, showing information about the device and its connectivity. A home screen may be made up of several pages, between which the user can swipe back and forth. In the summer of 2019, Huawei announced it would create an alternative operating system to Android known as Harmony OS, and has filed for intellectual property rights across major global markets. Google introduced the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones in October 2016, marketed as being the first phones made by Google, and exclusively featured certain software features, such as the Google Assistant, before wider rollout. Pichai himself would eventually switch positions, becoming the new CEO of Google in August 2015 following the company’s restructure into the Alphabet conglomerate, making Hiroshi Lockheimer the new head of Android.
The flash storage on Android devices is split into several partitions, such as /system/ for the operating system itself, and /data/ for user data and application installations. With the release of Android Oreo in 2017, Google began to require that devices shipped with new SoCs had Linux kernel version 4.4 or newer, for security reasons. Google maintains a public code repository that contains their experimental work to re-base Android off the latest stable Linux versions. One of those components, Google Play Services, is a closed-source system-level process providing APIs for Google services, installed automatically on nearly all devices running Android 2.2 “Froyo” and higher.
Google Play Services and vendor changes
Community releases often come pre-rooted and contain modifications not provided by the original vendor, such as the ability to overclock or over/undervolt the device’s processor, or security enhancements beyond what is included in the stock OS. Libraries written in C may also be used in applications by injection of a small shim and usage of the JNI. Following the trace-based JIT principle, in addition to interpreting the majority of application code, Dalvik performs the compilation and native execution of select frequently executed code segments (“traces”) each time an application is launched.For its Java library, the Android platform uses a subset of the now discontinued Apache Harmony project. Development of the Linux kernel continues independently of Android’s other source code projects. On top of the Linux kernel, there are the middleware, libraries and APIs written in C, and application software running on an application framework which includes Java-compatible libraries.
These databases form electronic maps to locate smartphones, allowing them to run apps like Foursquare, Google Latitude, Facebook Places, and to deliver location-based ads. Android smartphones 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. GCHQ has, according to The Guardian, a wiki-style guide of different apps and advertising networks, and the different data that can be siphoned from each. It is sometimes also mentioned in articles discussing a device, because it allows to distinguish different hardware variants of a device, even if the manufacturer offers them under the same name. Internally, Android identifies each supported device by its device codename, a short string, which may or may not be similar to the model name used in marketing the device.