Name the different layers of Android operating system?

1. Linux Kernel

2. Libraries

3. Android Run time

4. Application Framework

5. Android Apps

The app that we develop will go to the Android Apps layer.

Now we will look at each of these layers in detail:

1. Linux Kernel

The basic layer is the Linux Kernel. The whole Android OS is built on top of the Linux Kernel with some further architectural changes. Please don’t get confused by the terms Linux and Linux Kernel.  The term Kernel means the core of any Operating System. By saying Android is based upon Linux Kernel, it doesn’t mean that it is another Linux distribution. It is not like that. It simply means, Android at its core is Linux. But you can’t run any linux packages on Android. It is a totally different OS. It is this Linux kernel that interacts with the hardware and it contains all the essential hardware drivers. Drivers are programs that control and communicate with the hardware. For example, consider the Bluetooth function. All devices has a Bluetooth hardware in it. Therefore the kernel must include a Bluetooth driver to communicate with the Bluetooth hardware.  The Linux kernel also  acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and other software layers.  As the Android is built on a most popular and proven foundation, the porting of Android to variety of hardware became a relatively painless task.

2. Libraries

The next layer is the Android’s native libraries. It is this layer that enables the device to handle different types of data. These libraries are written in c or c++ language and are specific for a particular hardware.

Some of the important native libraries include the following:

Surface Manager: It is used for compositing window manager with off-screen buffering. Off-screen buffering means the apps can’t directly draw into the screen, instead the drawings go to the off-screen buffer. There it is combined with other drawings and form the final screen the user will see. This off screen buffer is the reason behind the transparency of windows.

Media framework: Media framework provides different media codecs allowing the recording and playback of different media formats

SQLite: SQLite is the database engine used in android for data storage purposes

WebKit: It is the browser engine used to display HTML content

OpenGL: Used to render 2D or 3D graphics content to the screen

3. Android Runtime

Android Runtime consists of Dalvik Virtual machine and Core Java libraries.

Dalvik Virtual Machine

It is a type of JVM used in android devices to run apps and is optimized for low processing power and low memory environments. Unlike the JVM, the Dalvik Virtual Machine doesn’t run .class files, instead it runs .dex files. .dex files are built from .class file at the time of compilation and provides higher efficiency in low resource environments. The Dalvik VM allows multiple instance of Virtual machine to be created simultaneously providing security, isolation, memory management and threading support.

ART

Google has introduced a new virtual machine known as ART (Android Runtime) in their newer releases of Android. In Lollipop, the Dalvik Virtual Machine is completely replaced by ART. ART has many advantages over Dalvik VM such as AOT (Ahead Of Time) compilation and improved garbage collection which boost the performance of apps significantly.

Core Java Libraries

These are different from Java SE and Java ME libraries. However these libraries provides most of the functionalities defined in the Java SE libraries.

4. Application Framework

These are the blocks that our applications directly interacts with. These programs manage the basic functions of phone like resource management, voice call management etc. As a developer, you just consider these are some basic tools with which we are building our applications.

Important blocks of Application framework are:

Activity Manager: Manages the activity life cycle of applications

Content Providers: Manage the data sharing between applications

Telephony Manager: Manages all voice calls. We use telephony manager if we want to access voice calls in our application.

Location Manager: Location management, using GPS or cell tower

Resource Manager: Manage the various types of resources we use in our Application

5. Applications

Applications are the top layer in the Android architecture and this is where our applications are gonna fit into. Several standard applications comes pre-installed with every device, such as:

• SMS client app
• Dialer
• Web browser
• Contact manager

As a developer we are able to write an app which replace any existing system app. That is, you are not limited in accessing any particular feature. You are practically limitless and can whatever you want to do with the android (as long as the users of your app permits it). Thus Android is opening endless opportunities to the developer.