Hundreds of millions of devices work on Android OS. The platform is open source, which gives a lot of opportunities to devs and business owners. Everyone can write their own application and promote it through different channels. All tools are free and the programming language is very simple.
Features of the Android Platform
Android is among widely used operating systems in the world, it is an absolute world leader when you consider all devices connected to the Internet: personal computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. That’s why it is always a good idea to write an app that is compatible with the popular majority of devices around the world.
Required Tools
How to start writing an application for Android? What specific android app development services should you address in case of any difficulties? First, you need to install Android Studio. This is the official development environment (IDE) for Android. If you do not have Android SDK and other solutions installed on your PC, Android Studio will automatically install them to the machine. Android SDK is a programming environment for Android, which must be installed along with the IDE. The SDK includes libraries, executable files, scripts, documentation, which you can then use during coding. It is also useful to install the Android emulator on your pc and then to run it in the APK applications.
When all the tools are in place, you can create the first project. But first, you need to deal with the basic concepts and understand what the Android application is and what features it possesses.
What Is the Android Application?
The standard programming language for Android applications is Java. Of course, Google is actively promoting Kotlin as a language that can replace Java. However, it is not the only option. Applications can also be coded in C ++.
Each Android app product is unique and should comply with Linux security rules:
- Each application is a separate user in a multi-user Linux system;
- By default, the system assigns each application a unique user ID, which is unknown to the application, the system sets permissions for all application files so that they are accessible only to this user ID;
- Each process has its own virtual machine (VM), so the executable code is isolated from other applications;
- By default, each application starts its own Linux process.
Android applications consist of three components. These are the original blocks, with are the entry point through which the system or user can enter to an application.
- Service – a universal entry point to keep the app running in the background. This component performs durable operations or works for remote processes in the background. Services have no visual interface;
- A broadcast receiver is a component that allows several participants to check the actions performed by applications in the system;
- A content provider is a component that manages a common set of application data from a file system, an SQLite database, the Internet, or any persistent storage that an application can access.
In case you are working on an app, you need to make sure all the above features are properly set up.
