Android OS: All you should know- Pors and cons

There are arguably three major mobile operating systems currently in the market, each with its own pros and cons, in this post I’ll take on one of them- the Google owned

Android^TM  (Android is a registered trademark of Google Inc.)OS. Note that am not saying Android is better; I’ll talk about other mobile operating systems in later posts.

Enough with the intro let’s get started- Android: owned and developed by Google Inc.

The Android^TM OS has become a mainstream mobile OS, not only found in mobile phones and tablets but also in smart cameras and gaming consoles. Android is an open source OS and that gives it an edge over others (with drawbacks too of course) with a large ecosystem of eager develops constantly pushing it forward. Ok enough with the introduction, let's get to business.

What We Luve:

· Its open sourced: and has a large community to support development-this means you can always find help when you need- you can edit the code yourself (that’s if you know your way about) to fit your needs.

·  User Control: Android has little or no restrictions (especially rooted devices). You practically have power to tweak the OS as you want, to suite your needs, although these possess security threats to your device. Android allows you to add media content from any location unlike some mobile OS (#coughs iOS)

 

· Large app ecosystem: Although it’s still playing catch-up with iOS, Android OS has thousands of apps for your device. Developers are constantly supporting their apps because of the number of people using the OS. The official app store for the OS is the Google play. Alternatively you can download apps and games from other sources (not recommended) and install them. Developers mostly target Android because of its large number of users so you won’t be wrong if you expect every new app to first land on your Android smartphone/tablet.

· Carrier support: Most carriers have robust support for devices running the Android OS.

· OEM interest: All the major original equipment manufacturers have embraced Android (except Nokia of course). The advantage here is that users who chose Android over other OS have a huge array of devices to choose from- from the SAMSUNG’s galaxy series (notably the most prevalent devices running Android) to other offerings from HTC, SONY, LG, Amazon (yes they have Android tablets) etc. New and interesting players are coming up too. This allows for competition in hardware and special offerings thereby giving the end users awesome experience with the OS.

· Google services: We all know that Google Inc. is a dominant player in web services right? Android is owned by Google (yea we all know). Though Google Inc. may not officially say it but with Android devices, you have first-hand experience with Google services. Android devices are always the first to receive updates for native apps that enable users use the web services.

· Impressive user interface: Android has one of the most interesting to use user interface out there, with lots of animations to impress your eyes, you can be sure to make your friends drool for your phone. Google allows its OEM partners to tweak the feel of the user interface so there would certainly be differences in every OEM’s offering

What we don’t luve:

· App control in store: Yeah! You just got your Android phone and you can’t wait to stack it up with all the cool apps you’ve been hearing about huh? Hold on a sec, do you really need them? The Google store has a poor reputation for controlling app quality in the play store. App savvy users may end up downloading spy apps to their phones.

· Its resource hungry: Android is virtually the most resource hungry mobile OS currently available. The OS itself consumes a lot of memory (RAM) space and allows the rest of the memory for third party apps. They say live by example huh? Android apps also like the OS itself need a lot of memory to run properly. At the end a relatively few running apps (compared to iOS and Windows Phone 8) will suck up your available RAM

· Lagging: Am not sure if there’s any other thing that worries Android fans like the lagging problem. It’s not as bad as people (Apple and Nokia fan boys) would want you to believe (#clears throat# at least not as bad as old Blackberry devices) but it does get into your way sometimes. Google boasts of the project butter in the latest updates in the latest Jellybean, but while this helps to reduce the lags a great deal, it does not completely eliminate it.

Summary: Every mobile operating system has its targeted audience, if you are the user that loves general control over his/her phone, install lots of apps/games and don't care much about security then Android is your thing. Let me hear from you what you know about Android too in the comment section.  

Attribution: Android is a registered trademark of Google Inc. and the Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License and is used with permission from Google Inc.