Android
Contents
1. Hardware
2. Development
2.1. Update schedule
2.2. Linux kernel
Android's kernel is based on one of the Linux kernel's long-term support (LTS) branches. Since April 2014, Android devices mainly use versions 3.4 or 3.10 of the Linux kernel. The specific kernel version depends on the actual Android device and its hardware platform; Android has used various kernel versions since the version 2.6.25 that was used in Android 1.0.
2.3. Software Stack
2.3.1. Linux kernel
On top of the Linux kernel, there are the middleware, libraries and APIs written in C, and application software running on an application framework which includes Java-compatible libraries based on Apache Harmony. Development of the Linux kernel continues independently of other Android's source code bases.
2.3.2. Android Runtime
Android 4.4 introduced Android Runtime (ART) as a new runtime environment, which uses ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation to entirely compile the application bytecode into machine code upon the installation of an application. In Android 4.4, ART was an experimental feature and not enabled by default; it became the only runtime option in the next major version of Android, 5.0.
Dalvik: Until version 5.0, Android used Dalvik as a process virtual machine with trace-based just-in-time (JIT) compilation to run Dalvik "dex-code" (Dalvik Executable), which is usually translated from the Java bytecode.
2.3.3. Android's Standard C Library
2.3.4. Application Framework
Includes Java-compatible libraries based on Apache Harmony.
http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html: how to build apps using Android's various APIs(APIs Docs)
2.3.5. Applications
2.4. Open-source community
3. Security and Privacy
4. Relatives