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Sunday, September 25, 2011

What is Android or Android Phone


What is Android?

About Android:
Android is an operating system intended for  mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers and more recently used in car other electronic devices such as media players, VOIP phones, Car dashboards and even refrigerators and Micro Waves. It is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.

In the beginning:

Before 2007, Android would have meant a completely different topic, a robot built in the image of humans.

Google purchased the initial developer of the software, Android Inc., in 2005. The Open handset alliance led by Google itself consisting of major tech companies was created to further the OS.

The first commercial product was the T-Mobile G1 smartphone manufactured by HTC. It was released October 2008 for T-mobile. It had the Android OS platform version 1.0. The OS lacked many of the refinements that the current day versions have. In fact the phone saw a major improvement in performance when it was updated with OS version 1.5 (Cupcake).

The 1.5 update brought in many enhancements like automatic screen orientation using the accelerometer and improved Bluetooth functionality.

The phone got mixed reviews. Cnet commented that the Phone was not really suitable for mainstream consumers and business users.

Evolution:



CyanogenMod V7 Android Rom - Supported Devices and direct links

About Cyanogen Mod :


CyanogenMod (pronounced sigh-AN-oh-jen-mod), is a customized, aftermarket firmware distribution for several Android devices (See above for supported devices & how to install CyanogenMod on said devices). Based on the Android Open Source Project, CyanogenMod is designed to increase performance and reliability over Android-based ROMs released by vendors and carriers such as Google, T-Mobile, HTC, etc. CyanogenMod also offers a variety of features & enhancements that are not currently found in these versions of Android.                                                                                                               (as in Cyanogenmod.com)


Below is the list of supported devices and links to the download and info pages for the respective device :
Devices :
Barnes & Noble
Commtiva
Geeksphone
Google
HTC
Huawei
LG
Motorola
Samsung
Viewsonic
ZTE


New Android Market - apk download

Android market has been updated to closely reflect the Full web version of the market. Though much slower than the previous market version, it offers more information in a organized way and more main categories.

New Categories added are Movies and Books.

It now also includes new lists like Top grossing, New apps top list, New apps top grossing lists, trending etc which were originally available in Web version of the market only.

Download link from XDA here

Below are the screen shots :

Android market : Main Page


Android Market : Top Grossing

Android Market : Apps - Featured


Android Market: Trending

Movies :