Using Android Studio, you can develop for any Android-powered device, or create virtual devices that emulate any hardware configuration.Īndroid provides a rich development architecture.
It offers advanced features for developing, debugging, and packaging Android apps. To help you develop your apps efficiently, Google offers an integrated development environment (IDE) called Android Studio. At runtime, Android applies the correct resource sets based on the device's screen size, screen density, locale, and so on. For example, create one set for parts of the UI that are common to all form factors, and other sets for features specific to phones or tablets. You can declare your UI in lightweight sets of XML resources.
By writing the code in Java and creating a single app binary, you create an app that can run on both phone and tablet form factors. To develop apps using the SDK, you use the Java programming language to develop the app and Extensible Markup Language (XML) files to describe data resources. Use the SDK to create apps that look great and take advantage of the hardware capabilities available on each Android-powered device.
The SDK includes software libraries of prewritten code, a debugger, a device emulator, documentation, sample code, and tutorials. To develop apps that take advantage of the Android operating system and UI, use the Android software development kit (SDK). Because Android-powered devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage processes to keep power consumption at a minimum, providing longer battery use. The Android platform, based on the Linux kernel, is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets.
For example, you could design a racing game where the user rotates the device as if it were a steering wheel. These sensors can also detect screen rotation. Many apps take advantage of internal hardware such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, and proximity sensors to respond to additional user actions. Besides a dynamic interface that responds immediately to touch, an Android-powered device can vibrate to provide haptic feedback. The Android home screen may be made up of several panes, and the user swipes back and forth between the panes.Īndroid is designed to provide immediate response to user input. Along the top of the screen is a status bar, showing information about the device and its connectivity. The figure above shows app icons on the home screen (left), playing music (center), and displaying app widgets (right). Android can also play multimedia content such as music, animation, and video. Home screen panes can also contain app widgets, which display live, auto-updating content such as the weather, the user's email inbox, or a news ticker. The Android home screen can contain several panes of app icons, which launch their associated apps.
Android can also support game controllers and full-size physical keyboards connected by Bluetooth or USB. In addition to the keyboard, there's a customizable on-screen keyboard for text input.
People use touch gestures such as swiping, tapping, and pinching to manipulate on-screen objects. Android's UI is mainly based on direct manipulation. Every day another million users power up their Android-powered devices for the first time and start looking for apps, games, and other digital content.Īndroid provides a touchscreen user interface (UI) for interacting with apps. It has the largest installed base of any mobile platform and is still growing fast. Most popular platform for mobile appsĪs the world's most popular mobile platform, Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around the world.
Developers choose to develop for Android in order to reach the majority of mobile device users. They may need to address business requirements or build new services or businesses, or they may want to offer games and other types of content for users. All together, Android represents an ecosystem for mobile apps.ĭevelopers create apps for a variety of reasons. Android also provides a marketplace to distribute apps. Android includes a software development kit (SDK) that helps you write original code and assemble software modules to create apps for Android users. It can run on many different devices from many different manufacturers.