ANDROID OPERATING SYSTEM & SMARTPHONES
By: Ronnie Hansen 
“What is” Android and the Android Experience?
November, 2007 Google changed the way Smartphone’s will operate and the future of Smartphones. Android became an immediate major player in the mobile phone distribution. It has come a long ways in just 3.5 years. The advancement and market share of Android has become its money maker. Android is an operating system that runs on Smartphone’s across the world. It is an operating system developed by Google to run on mainly touch screen phones. It runs on Linux kernel which allows it to be free and open source. “Open”, or “open-source”, means that the underlying software which Android uses is accessible to anybody interested in taking a look. If you are a manufacturer, that means you don’t have to ask Google (or pay Google) to use Android on your gadget; if you’re creating software, you don’t have to pay to get access in order to make your apps work” (SlashGear101, 2011).This is used in the Unix-like operating system. This allows our mobile phones to essentially search everything from the web and get directions with only one touch. The Android platform comes to users in several experiences, not only cell phones, yet tablets. Tablets are simply touch screen laptops, or oversized smartphones. Almost every successful tablet is Android, except for the iPad of course. This is something that Apple and Android have dominated since it began last year. Blackberry (RIM) and Windows mobile have yet to really make a dent in the tablet field; however tablets are the future moving forward.
Newer Android phones allow you to touch the search key, then say search or navigate you to your desired criteria. For example you can say “Navigate to Starbucks”, then without you doing another thing it will dial in your route from where you are, and navigate you to your destination. On a simpler note, you can speak or type in “starbucks” and it will directly bring you to Google’s search page with your desired criteria already in there with results. Many Android devices operate on Touch screen phones, which is also a fairly new technological advance in the mobile phone industry. Touch screen phones have came quite a ways from the early models, which required a stylus (stick/pen) to operate them.
Android released in 2008 with version 1.6 (cupcake), 2.0 (donut), 2.1 (eclair), 2.2 (froyo)-most common, and then 2.3 (gingerbred)-next slated Operating system. Each new version brings new design, features, and upgrades to the phone. Quite similiar to apple with 3, 3gs, and 4. A key component (benefit) of Android is the customization of it and what you are allowed to do with it. You can customize your icons, different themes, add widgets to the screen are just to name a few benefits. For example, mostly everyone with a name seems to be on Facebook, and on Facebook constantly so with an Android phone it updates and has a application just for Facebook, and you don’t even need to log on to the internet. Plenty of cool features, such as email sync, so users coming from other Smartphone platforms won’t feel like they are missing anything. Gmail backs up all contacts so every phone you get, you’ll no longer need to switch over contacts.
The beauty in Android devices is they are always upping one another, meaning if HTC gets a new device, soon to follow will be Samsung or Motorola with their latest pitch. Some examples are the processors (speed of phone-interface usage) is always improving and jumping. When the first Android phone released (HTC Google G1) for T-mobile, it was running a 528 MHz processor (CPU) which is less than half of what the newest technology has. Currently there are several phones running at least a 1 GHz processor and the Motorola Atrix is at 1.2 GHz. By the end of 2011 we should see a phone running 1.5 GHz which is essentially like a computer speed (http://www.slashgear.com/bsquare-mdp-puts-1-5ghz-dual-core-msm8660-snapdragon-into-developer-device-video-27148769/). This downside to this, is every time you settle in and purchase a “new” device, well it won’t for long. Innovation is something that the Android system is built on. A new device coming this summer will be a 3D cell phone, which allows the user to record in 3D and playback in 3D (http://www.slashgear.com/htc-evo-3d-revealed-at-sprint-event-ctia-2011-22141723/).
Google holds about 60% of the search engine market so every time a smartphone user searches on his or her android device Google is making money (Dr. Coopman). Advertisements are a big factor into what they make.
Technical videos of Android Operating System:
Smartphone Use
According to Amy Lee of the Huffington Post, “Thirty-nine percent say they've used their smartphone while going to the bathroom.” Smartphones are becoming highly used in untraditional ways. Ten years ago, it would be surprising to see anything between 3%-9% for this study, however now; it is 39%, and only rising. Most Americans can’t imagine leaving home without their mobile phones. Nearly all adults in the U.S. now have cellphones, with one in four having smartphones, pocket-sized devices more powerful than the computers initially used to send men to the moon. By the end of 2011, Nielsen predicts that the majority of mobile subscribers in the U.S. will have smartphones” (The Nielson Company, 2011). Smartphones are more than just a cell phone; they allow the user to do so much more. Internet is the main advantage but with iPhone and Android now Applications have become a major use in mobile phones.
Another trend according to Amy lee of the Huffington Post, that 93% of people uses their smartphones at home which just shows the capability and convenience of them. This is a stat that you have to consider a good chunk of those 93% have internet on their laptop/desktop. The user friendliness has come a long ways in speed and internet advancement on these phones. It is much easier to grab your handheld device, rather than get up, log on to the internet just to search something. Extensive research and typing still and always will be king on the laptop/desktop platform, however hand held smartphone are gaining on that.
The usage is rising in shopping on mobile phones, according to a study from Commerce Daily, mobile sales will reach $9 billion in 2011. And that it is preferred to a laptop or computer. Small priced purchases such as food, home items, and personal goods will usually and always be in-store, however clothing/apparel, flights/vacations, and small to big electronic devices will be nearly all online within the coming years. That is the trend that we see today. Most people purchase their flights or vacations online, and a good portion like the easiness of shopping for clothing/apparel online. It is much easier to log onto eBay or Amazon to get something like a phone or camera, or even small electronic gadgets there, than it is to walk into a store.
According to John Brownlee of geek.com, an interesting new fact is that smartphones outsold PC’s for the very first time in 2010 (http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/smartphones-outsell-pcs-for-the-first-time-in-history-2011028/). This here shows the direction of the smartphone. This is just the start of stats where mobile phone outduels the PC in sales. The irony of this article is that PC sales were up 5.5% in 2010. The writing is on the wall with the Amy Lee’s article about Americans using their smartphones at home, and even in the bathroom.
Some interesting stats according to googlemobileads.blogspot.com:
- 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone
- 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV
- 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home
Applications
Several articles talk about how the web is dying (such as the http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1, we read in class) and this is a result of applications. Several articles refer to the actual web within itself, not the internet. Applications are becoming a key part of the way smartphones are used. Without apps, you have a fancy phone with optimal internet usage, which is not good enough anymore. Applications are designed to make it easier for the user to get the information they want, or to entertain. Applications generally speaking are a shortcut away from the internet, yet get you to the internet without using your browser. Such as social networking apps, they are optimized and compacted for easy and quick usage. Games are still the most popular application use, according to Mobile Apps playbook-a study done by the Nielsen Company.
Apps come in all shapes and size, according to the mobile apps playbook study, “Facebook is the leading social networking app, the Weather Channel is the top weather app, Google Maps dominates Maps/Navigation and Pandora is the most popular Music app. “Those are also the top 4 categories of type of content of apps that are downloaded. News and Entertainment are a close 5th and 6th. In a recent study, 57% of Android apps are free in the market, compared to less than 30% for the iPhone, according to techcrunch.com (http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/distimo-june-2010/). Due to Android being open source, developers can add applications into the android system without Google overlooking them. Versus Apple; all applications must be approved before they can hit the app store. The market is similar to the iPhone’s app store in the respect you can search by category, free or paid, or when the app was created. It is a user friendly experience that brings almost too many apps in one spot. However, too much is better than never enough in this case.
Scholarly Sources
Emmett, A. (2008). Handheld Headlines. American Journalism Review,
30(4), 24-29.
C. Pascu, D. Osimo, M. Ulbrich, G. Turlea, J.C. Burgelman (2007). The potential disruptive
impact of Internet2 based technologies. First Monday, Volume 12, Number 3 — 5 March 2007
Critical Friends of Technology CFT (2003). A social ecology of
wireless technology. First Monday, Volume 8, Number 8- 4 August 2003.
Lugano, G (2008) Mobile social networking in theory and practice.
First Monday, Volume 13, Number 11 - 3 November 2008
Other Sources
Company, N. (2011). The State of Mobile Apps.
The Nielsen Company. April 27, 2011, from
blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/NielsenMobileAppsWhitepaper.pdf
Pham, D. (2011). Smartphone user study shows mobile movement under way –
Google Mobile Ads Blog. Google Mobile Ads Blog. April 25, 2011, from
http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/04/smartphone-user-study-shows-mobile.html
Rao, L. (2011). Google Survey: 39 Percent Of Smartphone Owners Use Their Devices In The
Bathroom . TechCrunch . April 25, 2011, from
Sutter, J. D., & CNN. (2011). Smartphones: Our national obsession - CNN.
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http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-18/tech/smartphone.everywhere_1_smartphone-text-message-
ipod?_s=PM:TECH
PEW Study
Horrigan, J. B., & American Life Project, (2010)
P. I. Wireless Connectivity Has Drawn Many Users More Deeply into Digital Life.
Internet Typology: The Mobile Difference. April 2011, from
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1162/internet-typology-users-mobile-communication-devices
Other Sites
Hamiliton, A. (2008) "Android: Google's Dream, Apple's Nightmare? –
TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews –
TIME.com. April 5, 2011 from
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1843164,00.html.
Brownlee, J(2011) Smartphones outsell PCs for the first time in history.
Cell Phones & Mobile Device Technology News & Updates | Geek.com. Geek.com. April 2011, from
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/smartphones-outsell-pcs-for-the-first-time-in-history-2011028/