Android Authority what is Android? And how does it work. today we are starting a brand new series called Android one-on-one and on this post 'we are going to discuss the very basics of Android right when you turn your phone on setting up your Android device and I'm showing you a few things on the interface so you can better understand the phone so if you're brand new to Android I want to welcome you to Android authority and welcome to the world of Android.
Management of home screen and notification bar in Android system
Android was created in October of 2003 and bought by Google in July of 2005. since that point Android has continued to grow exponentially and since 2013 Android has been the world's most popular mobile operating system but how did all this start and really how did this rather insignificant sieving project become the world's most popular mobile operating system.
if you had Android before and you want a refresher well then good for you to our kids put on your learning caps because we're going back to school all right so as I said in the intro this is the basics of Android we are starting back at square one.
Define android
so first let's understand what Android is Android is an operating system based on the Linux kernel. Android is not a phone nor is it an application and the most simplistic way I can say this in regards to a phone an operating system is where all your phone functions live your calls your Texas your applications anything that you input onto your device is going into the operating system.
Operating system
the operating system is processing that information and putting it into a readable format Android operating system versions have code names as well so you may hear someone refer to Android as jellybean or as Kit Kat. that's just the name of the current version of Android.
you're on it still has a number associated with it whether it's 4.2 or 4.3 the major manufacturers of Android usually has a skin on top of the operating system which some will argue enhances the current version of Android. these skins all have different names but still under the skin is running a version of Android don't the names like TouchWiz since motoblur confuse you.
Working of Android
it's all Android all right now that you know what Android is let me show you how it works before you begin these steps I'm showing you are on an Android device that does not have a skin if your phone has the skin it may look a bit different but the options and the settings will be similar and you should be able to still follow along the first step we will do is select our language select the arrow or the play button to continue at this point.
we are able to select the Wi-Fi network if you are near a Wi-Fi area. I do recommend that you actually connect to because during this wizard is going to pull down all of your Google information and that can take up a lot of data and time select your Wi-Fi network and type in your password.
the next step ask if you have a Google account. if you use Gmail the answer is yes, if you don't have a Google account I recommend making one at this point the way the Android works is centralized around Google so all of your emails come through calendar pictures and also applications.
If you ever did get a new Android phone or you wiped your current phone it's going to pull that information back down for you. if you don't have an account there's nothing to backup to and pretty much you can lose all of your information. if you get a new phone you can set this up on your computer or even your phone directly.
since I have an account I will select yes and then I'll enter my email address and password. now a quick thing for the keyboards to access the numbers press the question mark one two three button on the bottom left and to return back to the normal keyboard press the ABC button in the exact same location. once the password is type proceed to the next step.
now we are at the Google services screen this screen lets you set a few options the first option of backing up your information like downloads contact information and restore is if you had an Android device that's backed up already. then this will restore it.
now depending on who you are and how you feel about security step two and three is a decision you make on your own. now if you have location turned off a lot of applications that use the surrounding area around you may have issues like if you're on the Yellow Pages application it has a feature where searches around you also Maps and Google.
when you do a Google search for a store it will show you the closest ones to your area. now we can name our phone and you can personalize it if you're logged in with your gmail account. it should have the first and last name you have on your Google account. this part of the wizard explains one of the most useful features that has came to Android.
in recent years Google now in the next two slides. it explains what it is in somewhat vague detail it tells you information as you need it based on activities. it tells you your weather location for work home or current and also where you plan on traveling. it brings in sports scores for teams you care about and also news and information on things you've recently searched it gives you traffic information on your commute to and work is pretty much a hub of information.
that is all in your phone ready when you need it.
Management of home screen and notification bar in Android system
now we are at our home screen this is called the launcher. at the top we have our notification bar this shows us any of our notifications and also it shows us our status icons like Wi-Fi signal and battery and time. we can use our finger and drag the bar down to see what these icons actually mean. a lot of these notifications can be swiped away or you can press it to access the application that a corresponds to in this notification bar you can access some quick toggles. these toggles depends on the version of Android and skin you are using some toggles may be visible by the phones may require you to press a more button. you can simply press icons to launch different settings as always this depends on the version of Android you're using.
so I understand when people say the fragmentation and Android make things difficult for some people yes, their settings are in different places depending on your phone at the bottom of our device we have our dock icons. these are icons that will follow you on your home screen these should be applications that you access the most and no matter what homescreen you're on, they're going to be visible to move between your home screens. just swipe your finger to the left and to the right when you reach the end of the screen it would no longer go to the next screen.
also there are corresponding dots to show you which screen you are currently located on press the home button to return back to the main screen. the home button on Android looks like a little square but some devices have a physical button and that could be a circle, it could be a square, could be a rectangle. it just depends on the phone but it should be located on the middle bottom part of your device.
to launch an application simply press on the application with your finger this will open the application up and you are now in this program to get out of it go ahead and press on the home button or to go back to the previous screen. press on the back button.
okay this concludes the initial part 1 of Android getting started we just went through setting up for the very first time and also general navigation to the home screen as I said before depending on what version of Android you are running and also which device it is it may look a little bit different but pretty much they all have Android underneath the skin and it should operate the same way.
History of Android
in such a short amount of time the smartphones that people used in the mid-2000s were much different machines than what people carry around in their pockets today they were thicker bulkier slower and much less capable devices. furthermore these smartphones at the time or a ridiculous pain for developers because the world of mobile operating systems was becoming more and more fragmented in 2003.
Andy Rubin rich minder Nick Sears and Chris Weitz founded the Android incorporated Andy Rubin in a small team of software engineers soon started work on a mobile operating system known as Android and just a couple of years later in 2005 Google acquired their entire company not long after on October 22nd 2008.
the first commercially available smartphone running Android was released the HTC dream it wasn't the most impressive phone on the planet with a 500, 28 megahertz single core CPU and 192 megabytes of RAM but it did its job well which is to demonstrate to the world just what Android can do. Android versions cupcake and donut were soon released with cupcake paving the way for future touchscreen only Android phone and donut adding greater hardware support for the operating system. also it was around this time that it became more and more apparent that the most unique thing about Android was its open source nature because Android was open source hardware manufacturers were allowed to tweak and as skins to Android and other companies like Amazon were allowed to run Android on their fire tablets without Google Apps.
Google launched their own line of Nexus branded devices in 2010. starting with the HTC built Nexus One the Nexus One was a much more thought-out device than the HTC dream and as a result was a much more attractive. so around December 2010 when the Nexus S was released, Android Gingerbread was also revealed which introduced a refreshing new look and feel for Android after experimenting with Android Honeycomb which focused on bringing Android to tablets Android Ice Cream, Sandwich was released and the Galaxy Nexus was born.
Android became much more sleeker and elegant with Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus did not disappoint either just a little while after Google released Android KitKat and the Nexus 5.
Nexus 5 was an amazing phone with an interesting design great specs and a great price. but the Nexus that followed it the Nexus 6 might have been an even more interesting phone because of its software the Nexus 6 ran Android lollipop which introduced us to a fresher more polished version of Android lollipop redesigned olive' Android while adding in a plethora of new features and introduced Google's new design standard material design.
Android marshmallow was introduced to us next in September of 2015 running this time on a dual of devices the Nexus 5x and 6p the 5x was a more affordable phone with still decent specs but the 6p stilled the show and really ticked all the boxes of a great smartphone for that year. and that brings us to where we are today with Android nougat in the Google pixel nougat was more of a tweaks update but it did add quite a few cool new features to Android and the pixel is a good smartphone. but this all begs the question.
now that we've talked about the history of Android what does the future of Android let me know what you think in the comment section below thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed the post and if you did please like and share this article go ahead and smash that share button if you're
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