The problem with these major mobile phone operating systems is that they are closed source. Developers who want to write application for these operating systems does not have many options, but to rely on the vendor’s provision for development (Software Development Kit). This puts a considerable restriction on developers from the aspect of enhancing the operating system. Today users are demanding more openness and flexibility in the way they use a mobile phone.
Even today we have failed to enhance the mobile phone operating systems, the way market is demanding. Even in the era of 3G of mobile phone services, the applications are lacking the functionality that will exploit these technological advances.
Then comes the Android, touted as the first open mobile phone operating system. This operating system has given power in the hands of many developers, to enhance the Android in better sense. Developers are coming up with many ideas to extend the functionality of the operating system. This is surely changing the view of mobile phone operating system.
But is Android really going to do the things, that other operating system failed to do?
Let’s have a look in that perspective. What Android has up its sleeve to offer for a mobile phone user?
Android has a strong base in the form of Linux operating system. Linux operating system was the obvious choice from many mobile manufactures in past, as a secondary operating system for their upcoming mobile phones. Companies like Motorola even experimented with Linux as mobile phone operating system, but will little success. It makes sense to use Linux as base operating system for Android, as it is stable, can be trimmed down to bare minimum size and suitable for embedded applications. And the most important part is that it is open source!
Android is using Java as the development platform. Again this is not a new thing, most of the mobile phones today comes with Java virtual machine to run the Java applications. To summarize Android is not offering anything new, as far as the basic components are considered. But the combination of Linux with Java is definitely a novel idea!
So Google Android is offering an open source Linux operating system with Java virtual machine on it. That means people have to code in Java to develop applications for Android operating system. Developers are already doing that thing already with J2ME applications, targeted for Symbian operating system.
The advantage, in case of Android is that they have more transparency as far the operating system internals are concerned. So ideally they should develop more innovative application than any other operating system.
Is this entirely true? Does having an open operating system really going to help developer to build more innovative application? Or the developers all over the world are just thrilled by the openness offered by Android?
At the end of day what matters is how effectively a developer can develop an application for a given operating system. A major thing to note here is Android is not offering any new feature as far as the mobile operating system is concerned. It is only the open source nature of the operating system that is attracting more and more developer towards it.
The other point to note is lots of flexibility affects the standardization. Google or the Open Handset Alliance has not come up with any kind of guide lines or specification for the Android applications. That is obvious in case of open source operating system. (That’s why we have numerous desktop systems for Linux). So what we are expecting down the line is plethora of Android applications with non-standard interfaces in future.
The key to success for Android depends on how good Google can put discipline in the Android application development to make them standardized at the same time open for flexibility.
In future other mobile operating system companies will come up with more flexible options for development providing a tough competition to Android. The Qt toolkit for Symbian from Nokia is one of the examples of the same and looks very promising. Microsoft is also geared up to revamp their mobile version of Windows in the coming times.
Google Android operating system has started a good revolution that will make way for more and more innovations in mobile operating systems. In the end user will be the one, who will be benefited!
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