An operating system is a suite of programs that powers a device and tells it what to do. The Android Operating System is a mobile operating system that is developed by Google Inc. for use on their Android devices. The most common way someone will encounter the Android operating system is on an assortment of mobile devices from a variety of different companies that are all part of the Open Handset Alliance. These include Motorola’s Moto G, Samsung’s Galaxy Smartphone and HTC’s Butterfly 2. These devices provide many services and features such as access to the internet, use of GPS or Google Maps, sending and receiving emails and instant messages, listening to music and watching videos.
Phones and tablets that use the Android operating system allow for very easy customisation and therefore any user can vary and adjust their device(s) to align with their own style and tastes. There are also a cornucopia of applications to be found on Google’s own app
Android initially rushes to market their tablets to be able to compete with other tablets that were already hitting the markets such as the iPad. In order to have their tablets on the market so early however some of the original ones were launched with systems that were designed for phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which ran the Froyo version of Android, version 2.2. Later tablet devices were launched with a tablet-specific operating system called Android version 3.0, Honeycomb meaning that many older tablets were not able to take advantage of certain differences like apps specific to tablets. Steps have been taken however to combat fragmentation. Google launched Android version4.0 named Ice Cream Sandwich on October 19, 2011. This update was built on top of Android version 3.0 Honeycomb, the tablet-specific operating system, but Ice Cream Sandwich was an attempt to unify both of the smartphone and tablet