andbook! - Android Programming

       
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The Open Handset Alliance released the Google Android SDK on November 12 th , 2007, having announced it about a week before. The impact was unbelievable, almost every IT/programming-related news page dumped a news-post about the SDK release – the Google Groups (2) was overwhelmed with over 2000 Messages within the first two Days. The idea of the Android Platform was and still is amazing and is of course attracting more and more programmers every day. Especially the open architecture based on Intents and the possibility to replace even the Home-application grant a really large amount of flexibility to the whole platform.
       

“Android – Imagination is the limit”

“Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It is built to be truly open. For example, an application could call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users.”

“Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications.”

Here Google is talking of the so called Dalvik virtual machine (DalvikVM), which is a register based virtual machine, designed and written by Dan Bornstein and some other Google engineers, to be an important part of the Android platform. In the words “register based” we find the first difference to normal Java virtual machines (JVM) which are stack based.