About Android

Android is an operating system for mobile phones and tablets.While it was only released about four years ago, the Android operating system has gone through several different names and versions before settling on the Android name that is commonly known today. Previous names include Cupcake, Honeycomb and Jelly Bean among many others. The Android company worked on developing this product since the company's inception in 2003 in Palo Alto, California.

All with backgrounds in IT and web development as well as software technology, the four men worked on the software and continued to do so after the company was acquired by Google in 2005. Since Google had the financial means as well as the man power to develop the Android software technology to the maximum extent, this was a great move for the Android company and led to substantial advances in the Android operating system and the product's release in 2008.

Android itself contains the functions that are vital to using a mobile phone, including the phone dialler, text messaging client and phone number storage. Google also provides some additional apps, including a Gmail email client, Google Maps (which features free turn-by-turn satellite navigation) and YouTube.

Beyond that, you can also buy or download for free many other apps to enable your phone or tablet to do more. You can get these apps from the Android Market, or from other sources, such as GetJar or Amazon's Appstore. They can also be loaded onto an Android device manually, without using a store.

These apps can include ways to use Facebook, create documents, access online storage services such as Dropbox, or there's a huge range of games available. Some social networks are integrated into certain Android phones by default, enabling you to connect someone's contact information in your phone to their Facebook account, for example, and automatically pull through details such as their birthday.

Android is open source, meaning that manufacturers don't have to pay Google to use it, and that they're free to modify it. This means that it's used in a wide range of hardware varying in price from small budget phones to large-screen high-end handsets.

Android has many media features built in, so it's easy to load your music and movies onto your device and play them without problems. Most common audio file formats are supported, as are some of the most often-used video formats. Many manufacturers also add support for some of the less-common formats.

There's no official iTunes-like media syncing client for Android (though there are some third-party tools to do this, such as doubleTwist). In most cases, when you connect your device to your computer, it will show up as external storage, in the same way a USB flash drive would. You can then simply drag your music and video files to it to copy them over. When you disconnect your device, it will scan for media, and it to the music player app.

Google regularly releases updates to Android, which are downloaded straight to the phone or tablet without having to connect to a computer. These updates often bring speed and battery life improvement, as well as other new features.