Little Knowledge about Android Android is an Operating System for mobile devices developed by Google, which is built upon Linux kernel. Android competes with Apple's iOS (for iPhone/iPad), RIM's Blackberry, Microsoft's Windows Phone (previously called Windows Mobile), Sambian OS, and many other proprietary mobile OSes. Brief History and Versions In 2005, Google acquired a start-up called Android Inc. and started to work on the Android platform, in particular the Dalvik Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In 2007, a group of mobile handset producers and computing companies (including Google, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Intel, T-mobile, and Vodaphone) formed the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) to develop an open and non-proprietarymobile operating platform. The Android beta version was released in November 2007. In September 2008, Google released Android SDK 1.0, and placed it under open-source licence. Android 1.x did not support soft keyboard and required physical keypad. Android 1.5 (codenamed Cupcake - Android versions are codenamed after desserts) fixed this problem and including new features such as madia recording and playback, widgets, and added supports to native codes. Android 1.6 (Donut) introduced support for different screen resolutions. In October 2009, Google released Android SDK 2.0 (Éclair), which supports HTML 5, flash and multi-touch screens. Android 2.2 (Froyo) added just-in-time (JIT) compilation to the Dalvik virtual machine, which greatly improves the performance. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) added supports for the OpenGL ES 2.0, and a new concurrent garbage collector to the Dalvik VM. In March 2011, Google released Android SDK 3.0 (Honeycomb) - the first tablet-only Android platform. Android 3.0 supports wide screen and multi-core processors, and USB peripherals. Android 3.0 does not run on smart phones. Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released in October 2011, which is the result of merging Honeycomb (3.1) and Gingerbread (2.3) to support both smart phones and tablets. Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) was released in June 2012. It introduces the new features such as new Google search experience. Android 4.4 (Kitkat) was released in October 2013, which is optimized to run on a greater range of devices.