android app development, getting started with android, android basics, basics of android, introduction to android
Hello Friends, My name is Syed Daniyal Nasir. I hope you guys are fine and enjoying your lives with passion. Today, we are going to start the new series of tutorials related to Android Development and here's my first tutorial in thie series which is, Getting Started with Android. This is gonna be my first tutorial of Android Development for “The Engineering Projects”. As we all know, Android Development is enhancing vigorously day by day, Google Play Store is flooded with tons of new mobile applications each day. So a lot of people want to understand the basics of Android Development, so that they could develop their own applications. But some people find it very difficult due to certain reasons. That’s why we are going to make these tutorials as simple as possible, so that most of the people can find it useful. Now let’s get started with today's tutorial which is Getting started with Android.

In today's tutorial, we are not gonna cover anything technical. Instead, we are gonna stick to the basics of Android, like why we need Android and why we need to getting started with android. I will also share some useful theoretical knowledge in this post. So, my suggestion is to must read it once. Anyways, let's have a look on Android. :)

Note:

  • This tutorial is written by my brother SyedDaniyal Nasir, as he mentioned above, I am just posting it here on my blog as he was not free to do it on his own.
  • Welcome bro to my blog. :)

Getting Started with Android

Android Platform was developed by Open Handset Alliance which is then led by Google and they gave it a very attractive look and now a days, Android has been the most selling OS on Smart Phones and Tablets. Android is basically a touch screen mobile open source operating system based on Linux Kernel. In 2007, Google released the first beta version of the Android Software Development kit (SDK) and later in the next year, first commercial version by the name “Android 1.0” was finally released in September, 2008 by Google.

Android Programming

Android Programming style is based on Java Language. So for Android Development, you need to have a little bit knowledge of Java Language. Sun Microsystems released the first version of Java language in 1995. Most of the devices support Java language like, smart phones, Tablets, Raspberry Pi, laptops, desktop computer and many more. There is a little complication, to run Java code on any platform, needs to have a Virtual Machine implementation. But you don’t need to worry about it right now, we’ll cover this in our upcoming tutorials. So if you have some knowledge of Java Language then I am sure that you will find it very interesting.

Why Android?

If you are taking your first step towards the Mobile Application Development. You should definitely start with Android. Some of the key points are shown in the following figure.

android app development, getting started with android, android basics, basics of android, introduction to android

Android Versions
Android versions were named in alphabetical order. This first android version was named as Aestro while the latest one is Marshmallow. So, we have Android versions from A to M, which are shown as follows:
  • Aestro.
  • Blender.
  • Cupcake.
  • Donut.
  • Eclair.
  • Froyo.
  • Gingerbread.
  • Honeycomb.
  • Ice Cream.
  • Sandwitch.
  • Jelly Bean.
  • KitKat.
  • Lollipop.
  • Marshmallow.
What is API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface and API is used to interact with different systems, libraries and applications. API level is a value which shows the API version. Here's a small table for different versions of Android with respect to their API versions.
android app development, getting started with android, android basics, basics of android, introduction to android
Android Applications

As of July, 2015, more than 1.6 million applications have been published on Google play store and the number are increasing day by day. If we categorized the Android Applications, the top categories will be:

android app development, getting started with android, android basics, basics of android, introduction to android

Operating System Requirement for Android Development

This is one of the beauties of Android that you have a lot choices for Operating Systems. Some of the commonly used operating systems are:
  • Microsoft Windows XP or later version.
  • Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later version with Intel chip.
  • Linux including GNU C Library 2.7 or later.

Development Tools

Second beauty of Android is that all the development tools are free of cost. You just simple go to their website and download them as requirement. Some the important tools you will probably be needed for the Android Development are:
  • Java JDK5 or later version
  • Android SDK
  • Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6
  • Android Studio
  • Eclipse IDE for Java Developers (optional)
  • Android Development Tools (ADT) Eclipse Plug-in (optional)
This is it for now. In the next tutorial we’ll discuss about the Development Tools qualities and their installation process. If you guys have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment about them. So Stay tuned and have fun. See you later guys.