Difference Between Android 1.6 and Android 2.

1
1. clair is better optimized compared to Donut 2. clair has support for additional resolutions not available in Donut 3. clair supports HTML5 while Donut does not 4. The clair virtual keyboard is much better compared to the Donuts 5. clair has the improved Quick Contacts Interface while the Donut does not 6. clair has Microsoft Exchange support while the Donut does not 7. clair supports Bluetooth 2.1 while Donut does not

Difference Between Android 2.1 and 2.2

1. Android 2.2 has more speed and performance optimizations 2. Android 2.2 has USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot functionality not found in 2.1 3. Android 2.2 allows for app installation to the memory card while 2.1 does not 4. Android 2.2 adds Flash 10.1 support absent in 2.1 5. Android 2.2 has a lot of modified and added APIs 6. Android 2.2 improves support for Microsoft Exchange over 2.1

Difference Between Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Gingerbread has a different UI than Froyo Gingerbread has NFC support while Froyo does not Gingerbread has support for more sensors than Froyo Gingerbread has native support for multiple cameras while Froyo does not Gingerbread has system-wide copy/paste capabilities while Froyo does not Gingerbread supports more multimedia formats than Froyo does Gingerbread has improved application management over Froyo

Difference Between Windows Mobile and Google Android

1. Windows Mobile is from Microsoft while Android was developed by Google

2. Windows Mobile is proprietary while Android is open source 3. Windows Mobile is relatively old and pretty established while the Android is pretty new 4. There are a lot of phones that uses Windows Mobile while there are only a handful running Android 5. There are a lot more programs available for Windows Mobile compared to Android

What is Android?
Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.

Features
Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional) SQLite for structured data storage Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF) GSM Telephony (hardware dependent) Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent) Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent) Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE

Android Architecture
The following diagram shows the major components of the Android operating system. Each section is described in more detail below.

Applications
Android will ship with a set of core applications including an email client, SMS program, calendar, maps, browser, contacts, and others. All applications are written using the Java programming language.

Application Framework
By providing an open development platform, Android offers developers the ability to build extremely rich and innovative applications. Developers are free to take advantage of the device hardware, access location information, run background services, set alarms, add notifications to the status bar, and much, much more. Developers have full access to the same framework APIs used by the core applications. The application architecture is designed to simplify the reuse of components; any application can publish its capabilities and any other application may then make use of those capabilities (subject to security constraints enforced by the framework). This same mechanism allows components to be replaced by the user.

Underlying all applications is a set of services and systems, including: A rich and extensible set of Views that can be used to build an application, including lists, grids, text boxes, buttons, and even an embeddable web browser Content Providers that enable applications to access data from other applications (such as Contacts), or to share their own data A Resource Manager, providing access to non-code resources such as localized strings, graphics, and layout files A Notification Manager that enables all applications to display custom alerts in the status bar An Activity Manager that manages the lifecycle of applications and provides a common navigation backstack For more details and a walkthrough of an application, see the Notepad Tutorial.

Libraries
Android includes a set of C/C++ libraries used by various components of the Android system. These capabilities are exposed to developers through the Android application framework. Some of the core libraries are listed below: System C library - a BSD-derived implementation of the standard C system library (libc), tuned for embedded Linux-based devices Media Libraries - based on PacketVideo's OpenCORE; the libraries support playback and recording of many popular audio and video formats, as well as static image files, including MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, and PNG Surface Manager - manages access to the display subsystem and seamlessly composites 2D and 3D graphic layers from multiple applications LibWebCore - a modern web browser engine which powers both the Android browser and an embeddable web view SGL - the underlying 2D graphics engine 3D libraries - an implementation based on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer FreeType - bitmap and vector font rendering SQLite - a powerful and lightweight relational database engine available to all applications

Android Runtime
Android includes a set of core libraries that provides most of the functionality available in the core libraries of the Java programming language. Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the

Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool. The Dalvik VM relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionality such as threading and low-level memory management.

Linux Kernel
Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.