What is Android?

What is Android?

Android is a mobile operating system (OS) based on the Linux kernel and currently developed by Google. With a user interface based on direct manipulation, Android is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, with specialized user interfaces for televisions (Android TV), cars (Android Auto), and wrist watches (Android Wear). The OS uses touch inputs that loosely correspond to real-world actions, like swiping, tapping, pinching, and reverse pinching to manipulate on-screen objects, and a virtual keyboard. Despite being primarily designed for touchscreen input, it also has been used in game consoles, digital cameras, regular PCs (e.g. the HP Slate 21) and other electronics.

As of July 2013 the Google Play store has had over one million Android applications ("apps") published, and over 50 billion applications downloaded. A developer survey conducted in April–May 2013 found that 71% of mobile developers develop for Android. At Google I/O 2014, the company revealed that there were over one billion active monthly Android users, up from 538 million in June 2013. As of 2015, Android has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems.

Android's source code is released by Google under open source licenses, although most Android devices ultimately ship with a combination of open source and proprietary software, including proprietary software developed and licensed by Google. Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google backed financially and later bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007 along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance—​a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.

Android is popular with technology companies which require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices. Android's open nature has encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open-source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices which were officially released running other operating systems. The operating system's success has made it a target for patent litigation as part of the so-called "smartphone wars" between technology companies.

What is Smartphone?

A smartphone (or smart phone) is a mobile phone with an advanced operating system.Smartphones typically include the features of a phone with those of other popular mobile devices, such as personal digital assistant, media player and GPS navigation unit. Most have a touchscreen interface and can run third-party apps, and are camera phones. Later smartphones add broadband internet web browsing, Wi-Fi, motion sensors and mobile payment mechanisms.

In February 2014, 93% of mobile developers were targeting smartphones first for app development.In 2014, sales of smartphones worldwide topped 1.2 billion, which is up 28% from 2013.

Early years

The first caller identification receiver

Devices that combined telephony and computing were first conceptualized by Theodore G. Paraskevakos in 1971 and patented in 1974, and were offered for sale beginning in 1993. He was the first to introduce the concepts of intelligence, data processing and visual display screens into telephones which gave rise to the "smartphone." In 1971, Paraskevakos, working with Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, demonstrated a transmitter and receiver that provided additional ways to communicate with remote equipment, however it did not yet have general purpose PDA applications in a wireless device typical of smartphones. They were installed at Peoples' Telephone Company in Leesburg, Alabama and were demonstrated to several telephone companies. The original and historic working models are still in the possession of Paraskevakos.

Forerunners

IBM Simon and charging base (1993))

The first mobile phone to incorporate PDA features was an IBM prototype developed in 1992 and demonstrated that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. A refined version of the product was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. The Simon was the first cellular device that can be properly referred to as a "smartphone", although it wasn't called a smartphone in 1994. In addition to its ability to make and receive cellular phone calls, Simon was also able to send and receive faxes and e-mails and included several other apps like address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock, and note pad through its touch screen display. Simon is the first smartphone to be incorporated with the features of a PDA

The term "smart phone" appeared in print in 1995, for describing AT&T's "PhoneWriter(TM) Communicator" as a "smart phone".

iPhone & Android

In 2007, Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone, one of the first mobile phones to use a multi-touch interface. The iPhone was notable for its use of a large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction, instead of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical for smartphones at the time. 2008 saw the release of the first phone to use Android called the HTC Dream (also known as the T-Mobile G1).Android is an open-source platform founded by Andy Rubin and now owned by Google.Although Android's adoption was relatively slow at first, it started to gain widespread popularity in 2010, and now dominates the market.

These new platforms led to the decline of earlier ones. When Microsoft, for instance, started a new OS from scratch, in the form of Windows Phone, Nokia abandoned Symbian and partnered with MS to use Windows Phone on its smartphones. Windows Phone then became the third-most-popular OS. Palm was bought by Hewlett-Packard, turned into webOS which became Open webOS and later sold to LG Electronics. Research in Motion also made a new system from scratch, BlackBerry 10.

The capacitive touchscreen also had a knock-on effect on smartphone form factors. Before 2007 it was common for devices to have a physical numeric keypad or physical QWERTY keyboard in either a candybar or sliding form factor. However, by 2010, there were no top-tier smartphones with physical numeric keypads.

The future

In 2013, the Fairphone company launched its first "socially ethical" smartphone at the London Design Festival to address concerns regarding the sourcing of materials in the manufacturing.

In late 2013, QSAlpha commenced production of a smartphone designed entirely around security, encryption and identity protection

In December 2013, the world's first curved-OLED technology smartphones were introduced to the retail market with the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Round and LG G Flex models. Samsung phones with more bends and folds in the screens are expected this year.

Foldable OLED smartphones could be as much as a decade away because of the cost of producing them. There is a relatively high failure rate when producing these screens. As little as a speck of dust can ruin a screen during production. Creating a battery that can be folded is another hurdle.

A clear thin layer of crystal glass can be added to small screens like watches and smartphones that make them solar powered. Smartphones could gain 15% more battery life during a typical day. The first smartphones using this technology should arrive in 2015. This screen can also work to receive Li-Fi signals and so can the smartphone camera. The cost of these screens per smartphone is between $2 and $3, much cheaper than most new technology.

Near future smartphones might not have a traditional battery as their sole source of power. Instead, they may pull energy from radio, television, cellular or Wi-Fi signals.

In early 2014, smartphones are beginning to use Quad HD (2K) 2560x1440 on 5.5" screens with up to 534 ppi on devices such as the LG G3 which is a significant improvement over Apple's retina display. Quad HD is used in advanced televisions and computer monitors, but with 110 ppi or less on such larger displays.

As of 2014, Wi-Fi networks are much used for smartphones. As Wi-Fi becomes more prevalent and easier to connect to, Wi-Fi phones service will start to take off.

Since 2013, water and dustproofing have made their way into mainstream high end smartphones instead of specialist models with the Sony Xperia Z continuing through the Sony Xperia Z3 and also from other manufacturers with the Samsung Galaxy S5.

One problem with smartphone cameras is still the focus, but LG G3 Beat with Laser Focus has 8 points of focus. To focus what appears in the LCD, touch the object on screen to focus on it and the other positions will be 'bokeh'.

Some smartphones can be categorized as high-end point-and-shoot cameras with large sensor up to 1" with 20 Megapixels and 4K video. Some can store their pictures in proprietary raw image format, but the Android (operating system) 5.0 lollipop serves open source RAW images.

Modular smartphones are projected, in which users can remove and replace parts.

Air conditioning

Air conditioning

Air conditioning (often referred to as A/C, AC or aircon) is the process of altering the properties of air (primarily temperature and humidity) to more comfortable conditions, typically with the aim of distributing the conditioned air to an occupied space to improve thermal comfort and indoor air quality.

In common use, an air conditioner is a device that lowers the air temperature. The cooling is typically achieved through a refrigeration cycle, but sometimes evaporation or free cooling is used. Air conditioning systems can also be made based on desiccants.

In the most general sense, air conditioning can refer to any form of technology that modifies the condition of air (heating, cooling, (de-)humidification, cleaning, ventilation, or air movement). However, in construction, such a complete system of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning is referred to as HVAC (as opposed to AC).

The basic concept behind air conditioning is said to have been applied in ancient Egypt, where reeds were hung in windows and were moistened with trickling water. The evaporation of water cooled the air blowing through the window. This process also made the air more humid, which can be beneficial in a dry desert climate. In Ancient Rome, water from aqueducts was circulated through the walls of certain houses to cool them. Other techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season.

Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by American inventor Willis Carrier. The introduction of residential air conditioning in the 1920s helped enable the great migration to the Sun Belt in the United States.

Graphics processing unit

Graphics processing unit

A graphics processor unit (GPU), also occasionally called visual processor unit (VPU), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing, and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for algorithms where processing of large blocks of data is done in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, or it can be embedded on the motherboard or—in certain CPUs—on the CPU die.

The term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that are capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.

Computational functions

Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, later adding units to accelerate geometric calculations such as the rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems. Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color spaces. Because most of these computations involve matrix and vector operations, engineers and scientists have increasingly studied the use of GPUs for non-graphical calculations.

In addition to the 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). Newer cards like AMD/ATI HD5000-HD7000 even lack 2D acceleration; it has to be emulated by 3D hardware.

What is iPhone?

iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system.The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007; the most recent iPhone models are the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which were unveiled at a special event on September 9, 2014.

The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and can connect to many cellular networks, including 1xRTT (represented by a 1x on the status bar) and GPRS (shown as GPRS on the status bar), EDGE (shown as a capital E on the status bar), UMTS and EV-DO (shown as 3G), a faster version of UMTS and 4G (shown as a 4G symbol on the status bar), and LTE (shown as LTE on the status bar). An iPhone can shoot video (though this was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS), take photos, play music, send and receive email, browse the web, send texts, GPS navigation, record notes, do mathematical calculations, and receive visual voicemail. Other functions—video games, reference works, social networking, etc.—can be enabled by downloading application programs (‘apps’); as of October 2013, the App Store offered more than one million apps by Apple and third parties and is ranked as the world's second largest mobile software distribution network of its kind (by number of currently available applications).

There are eight generations of iPhone models, each accompanied by one of the eight major releases of iOS. The original 1st-generation iPhone was a GSM phone and established design precedents, such as a button placement that has persisted throughout all releases and a screen size maintained for the next four iterations. The iPhone 3G added 3G cellular network capabilities and A-GPS location. The iPhone 3GS added a faster processor and a higher-resolution camera that could record video at 480p. The iPhone 4 featured a higher-resolution 960×640 "Retina Display", a VGA front-facing camera for video calling and other apps, and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with 720p video capture. The iPhone 4S upgrades to an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, a dual-core A5 processor, and a natural language voice control system called Siri. iPhone 5 features the dual-core A6 processor, increases the size of the Retina display to 4 inches, introduces LTE support and replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector. The iPhone 5S features the dual-core 64-bit A7 processor, an updated camera with a larger aperture and dual-LED flash, and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, integrated into the home button. The iPhone 5C features the same A6 chip as the iPhone 5, along with a new backside-illuminated FaceTime camera and a new casing made of polycarbonate. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus further increased screen size, measuring at 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, respectively. In addition, they also feature a new A8 chip and M8 motion coprocessor. As of 2013, the iPhone 3GS had the longest production run, 1,181 days; followed by the iPhone 4, produced for 1,174 days.

The resounding sales of the iPhone, at the time, have been credited with reshaping the smartphone industry and helping make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies in 2011–12.

In late 2014, JP Morgan estimated "iPhone percentage of the worldwide smartphone install base has been around 15% since late 2012" being far behind the dominant Android-based smartphones. In a few mature markets countries such as; Japan, the iPhone has a majority, an exception to Android's dominance, and Australia where Android is rapidly approaching parity. In March 2014, sales of the iPhone brand had reached 500 million devices. In the last quarter of 2014, there were 74.5 million iPhones sold, a new record, compared to 51.0 million in the last quarter of 2013. Tim Cook revealed at the Apple Watch conference on March 9, 2015 that Apple had sold a total of 700 million iPhones to date.

Printer

Printer

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent human readable representation of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The two most common printer mechanisms are black and white laser printers used for common documents, and color inkjet printers which can produce high quality photograph quality output.

The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine. This system used a series of metal rods with characters printed on them and stuck a roll of paper against the rods to print the characters. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines, which operated in a similar fashion. The demand for higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. Among the systems widely used through the 1980s were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints.

The introduction of the low-cost laser printer in 1984 with the first HP LaserJet, and the addition of PostScript in next year's Apple LaserWriter, set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, but produced somewhat lower quality output (depending on the paper) from much less expensive mechanisms. Inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot matrix and daisy wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the $100 price point and became commonplace.

The rapid update of internet email through the 1990s and into the 2000s has largely displaced the need for printing as a means of moving documents, and a wide variety of reliable storage systems means that a "physical backup" is of little benefit today. Even the desire for printed output for "offline reading" while on mass transit or aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers and tablet computers. Today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes, like printing photographs or artwork, and are no longer a must-have peripheral.

Starting around 2010, 3D printing has become an area of intense interest, allowing the creation of physical objects with the same sort of effort as an early laser printer required to produce a brochure. These devices are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become commonplace.

Types of printers

Personal printers are primarily designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring minimal setup time to produce a hard copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute (ppm), and the cost per page is relatively high. However, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on memory cards or from digital cameras and scanners.

Networked or shared printers are "designed for high-volume, high-speed printing." They are usually shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm.

A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer.

A 3D printer is a device for making a three-dimensional object from a 3D model or other electronic data source through additive processes in which successive layers of material ( including plastics, metals, food, cement, wood, and other materials) are laid down under computer control. It is called a printer by analogy with an inkjet printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing a layer of ink on paper.

Technology

The choice of print technology has a great effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of documents, and noise. Some printer technologies don't work with certain types of physical media, such as carbon paper or transparencies.

A second aspect of printer technology that is often forgotten is resistance to alteration: liquid ink, such as from an inkjet head or fabric ribbon, becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so documents printed with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with toner or solid inks, which do not penetrate below the paper surface.

Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed using MICR toner or ink. Banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly.

DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to watch the DVD content, which could be a movie, a recorded TV show, or other content.

The first DVD player was created by Tatung Company in Taiwan in collaboration with Pacific Digital Company from the United States in 1994. Some manufacturers originally announced that DVD players would be available as early as the middle of 1996. These predictions were too optimistic. Delivery was initially held up for "political" reasons of copy protection demanded by movie studios, but was later delayed by lack of movie titles. The first players appeared in Japan in November, 1996, followed by U.S. players in March, 1997, with distribution limited to only 7 major cities for the first 6 months.

Players slowly trickled into other regions around the world. Prices for the first players in 1997 were $1000 and up. By the end of 2000, players were available for under $100 at discount retailers. In 2003 players became available for under $50. Six years after the initial launch, close to one thousand models of DVD players were available from over a hundred consumer electronics manufacturers.

Fujitsu released the first DVD-ROM-equipped computer on Nov. 6 in Japan. Toshiba released a DVD-ROM-equipped computer and a DVD-ROM drive in Japan in early 1997 (moved back from December which was moved back from November). DVD-ROM drives from Toshiba, Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi, and Sony began appearing in sample quantities as early as January 1997, but none were available before May. The first PC upgrade kits (a combination of DVD-ROM drive and hardware decoder card) became available from Creative Labs, Hi-Val, and Diamond Multimedia in April and May of 1997. In 2014, every major PC manufacturer has models that include DVD-ROM drives.

The first DVD-Audio players were released in Japan by Pioneer in late 1999, but they did not play copy-protected discs. Matsushita (under the Panasonic and Technics labels) first released full-fledged players in July 2000 for $700 to $1,200. DVD-Audio players are now also made by Aiwa, Denon, JVC, Kenwood, Madrigal, Marantz, Nakamichi, Onkyo, Toshiba, Yamaha, and others. Sony released the first SACD players in May 1999 for $5,000. Pioneer's first DVD-Audio players released in late 1999 also played SACD. SACD players are now also made by Accuphase, Aiwa, Denon, Kenwood, Marantz, Philips, Sharp, and others.