Features of Android

Because Android is open source and freely available to manufacturers for customization, there are no
fixed hardware or software configurations. However, Android itself supports the following features:




➤ Storage — Uses SQLite, a lightweight relational database, for data storage. Chapter 6
discusses data storage in more detail.
➤ Connectivity — Supports GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth (includes
A2DP and AVRCP), Wi-Fi, LTE, and WiMAX. Chapter 8 discusses networking in more detail.
➤ Messaging — Supports both SMS and MMS. Chapter 8 discusses messaging in more detail.
➤ Web browser — Based on the open source WebKit, together with Chrome’s V8 JavaScript
engine
➤ Media support — Includes support for the following media: H.263, H.264 (in 3GP or MP4
container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC (in MP4 or
3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP
➤ Hardware support — Accelerometer Sensor, Camera, Digital Compass, Proximity Sensor,
and GPS
➤ Multi-touch — Supports multi-touch screens
➤ Multi-tasking — Supports multi-tasking applications
➤ Flash support — Android 2.3 supports Flash 10.1.
➤ Tethering — Supports sharing of Internet connections as a wired/wireless hotspot