5 Interesting Facts About Android

Android is not LinuxFor internal usage, Google already maintains its own flavor of Linux to power its systems. A similar kind of fork happened with A

https://www.androided.me/2022/09/5-interesting-facts-about-android.htm

Fact 1: Android runs Linux. But it’s not “the Linux.”

Android is not LinuxFor internal usage, Google already maintains its own flavor of Linux to power its systems.

A similar kind of fork happened with Android where Google believed that certain features needed to be added to the Linux kernel to make it fit for Android.

One such feature is “wake locks“, a mechanism introduced by Google in Linux code to handle power management—Wake locks allow Android applications to request kernel not to go into low-power state.

Quite interestingly such changes were “rejected” in the staging area of Linux kernel—effectively requiring Google to remain aloof with its version of “Android Linux”—if we can call it that.

More information on Android vs. Linux is available in the linked article (dated 9th Feb).

Fact 2: Android uses Java as a development platform. But it’s not Java ME.

Android is not Java MEUnlike Linux, it’s not a fork of Java ME either (if there could be such a thing). Android provides its own SDK which is based on Java. Except for AWT or Swing, quite a lot of Java SE is supported in this SDK.

Limited JSRs (Java Specification Request), however, are implemented in addition to the core Java framework. Android’s support for Open GL, for example, is built similar to JSR 239.

Fact 3: Android runs a VM named Dalvik. But it’s not a Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Dalvik is not a JVMGoogle built a VM from scratch for Android phone; it is optimized for Android. Instead of running Java byte code, Dalvik runs .dex files. Further, unlike JVMs which are stack-based, Dalvik is a registers-based VM. Trivia: Dalvik is named after a town in Iceland.

After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Oracle sued Google over this VM. It’s widely believed that Oracle has shot itself in the foot by filing this lawsuit.

Fact 4: Android was not developed by Google!

Andy Rubin's HomepageAndroid Inc., the company behind Android, was a 22 month old startup when it was acquired by Google in mid 2005. Android was open sourced in October 2008 under Apache’s open source license. Google retained Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Android Inc, as VP Engineering.

Fact5: Android’s runtime includes a SQLite database!

But Android has SQLiteSQLite is a light weight relational database which is built into Android for data storage purpose. Android applications can also make us of this RDBMS.