Indian Messaging App Hike Launches New OS Total, to offer services without Internet

Hike Messenger has come out with a mobile operating system that will offer services such as messaging and recharging without using data, targeting the lower end of smartphone users to better take on leader WhatsApp.

Services offered on the system called Hike Total include financial transactions via Hike Wallet, news, horoscopes and rail information. The operating system will be pre-installed in entry-level smartphones from Intex and Karbonn priced between 3,500 and 5,000.

Unlike WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the micro-apps on Hike Total will work even without data.

Hike Total uses USSD (unstructured supplementary service data), a technology that transmits information through GSM network channels, which are normally used to make voice calls and send messages.

The objective was to get more users on the Hike platform, Kavin Mittal, founder of Hike, told ET. "We decided to invert the pyramid and go bottom-upwards because there are still around 200 million users of the total 400 million smartphone users who have smartphones but do not use data... we have to break into that market," he said.

Intex will integrate Hike's services in lower-priced smartphone models for the benefit of consumers, who will also get customised and differential data packs at cheaper rates, said director Keshav Bansal.

Hike is in talks with Lava and Micromax, besides Samsung and Chinese companies. On the carrier side, it has tied up with Bharti Airtel, Aircel, and BSNL. Reliance Jio Infocomm users will have to wait a while because the company's Voice over LTE network does not support USSD service.

"We're working on a solution to make it work on their network, too," Mittal said. Hike is exploring carrier-bundling, which can further bring down prices of devices and make access to its services cheaper.

Hike Total's services work on its new patented technology called UTTP, a version of USSD, which is often used to check a phone's serial number or data usage. Hike will give Rs 200 to each user on the purchase of the phones, which will be available beginning March 1.

"Technically, Total is an intelligently crafted answer by Hike to bridge the digital divide in the country," said Faizal Kawoosa, principal analyst at CyberMedia Research. "However, on the execution, it has to get aggressive across the value chain and have a very tight grip all along to let the solution reach the potential users with the quickest turnaround."

The Hike Messenger app, which has over 100 million users since launch in December 2012 - less than WhatsApp's 200 million subscribers in India - will continue as a separate app that uses data.

Mittal said barriers such as the high cost of data packs, smartphones, and inconvenient user interfaces have to be removed to get more users.

"For some sections, spending Rs 150 a month on data is still very high - that's why we've asked carriers to have sachet kind of data packs starting from Re 1. The idea is to gradually get them to use data and use more services," Mittal said.

He said Hike Total has been made easy to access. "We have made Hike Total just a two-three step process where users buying the devices will get the micro-apps on messaging, wallet, etc., pre-installed and by just entering the mobile number one can start using the services instantly," Mittal said.

To send pictures or music, data packs beginning from Re 1 with 20 MB of data will be offered so that customers can try data without spending too much.

Hike has incorporated Unified Payments Interface, which allows money transfers between bank accounts through mobile phones, to enable the addition of money to Hike Wallet, without using data. It is in talks to add various government services through Hike Total.

iOS (iPhone OS) by Apple Inc

iOS (previously iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. and distributed exclusively for Apple hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's iDevices.
Originally unveiled in 2007 for the iPhone, it has been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch (September 2007), iPad (January 2010), iPad Mini (November 2012) and second-generation Apple TV onward (September 2010). As of June 2014, Apple's App Store contained more than 1.2 million iOS applications, 500,000 of which were optimized for iPad. These apps have collectively been downloaded more than 60 billion times. It had a 21% share of the smartphone mobile operating system units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, behind Google's Android. By the middle of 2012, there were 410 million devices activated. According to the special media event held by Apple on September 12, 2012, 400 million devices had been sold by June 2012.
The user interface of iOS is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface.

Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command) or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching from portrait to landscape mode).
iOS shares with OS X some frameworks such as Core Foundation and Foundation; however, its UI toolkit is Cocoa Touch rather than OS X's Cocoa, so that it provides the UIKit framework rather than the AppKit framework. It is therefore not compatible with OS X for applications. Also while iOS also shares the Darwin foundation with OS X, Unix-like shell access is not available for users and restricted for apps, making iOS not fully Unix-compatible either.
Major versions of iOS are released annually. The current release, iOS 8.1.1, was released on November 17, 2014. In iOS, there are four abstraction layers: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer. The current version of the operating system (iOS 8.0), dedicates 1.3 - 1.5GB of the device's flash memory for the system partition, using roughly 800 MB of that partition (varying by model) for iOS itself.  It runs on the iPhone 4S and later, iPad 2 and later, all models of the iPad Mini, and the 5th-generation iPod Touch.

Apple Inc. provides updates to the iOS operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch through iTunes, and since iOS 5.0, also through over-the-air software updates. With the June 6, 2011 announcement of iOS 5.0, a USB connection to iTunes is no longer needed to activate iOS devices; data synchronization can happen automatically and wirelessly through Apple's iCloud service. The most recent update, iOS 8.1.1, was released on November 17, 2014.

Versions :
On June 29, 2007, Apple released the first version of what became iOS – concurrently with the first iPhone. The final 1.x series release was 1.1.5, released shortly after version 2.0.
July 11, 2008 saw the public release of iPhone OS 2.0, with upgrades through version 2.2.1 made available.
June 17, 2009 was the release date for iPhone OS 3.0. It was updated through (and including) version 3.1.3 (release date February 2, 2010). The first generation iPod Touch and iPhone have iPhone OS 3.1.3 as their newest available version. The iPad was introduced with iPhone OS 3.2, later updated to 3.2.2. 3.2.x versions of iPhone OS were made specifically for the iPad.
On June 21, 2010, iOS 4.0 was released to the public and was made available only to the iPod Touch and iPhone. iOS 4.0 was announced to have over 1500 new APIs for developers, with the highly anticipated multitasking feature. The iPod Touch (2nd generation) and iPhone 3G have iOS 4.2.1 as the final version available. Nevertheless, many features are not available for the iPhone 3G or iPod Touch (2nd generation), such as multitasking and home screen backgrounds. iOS 4.2 is the first version to bring major feature parity to the iPhone and iPad. The release of the CDMA iPhone for Verizon Wireless saw a branching of iOS. The 4.2 version sequence continued for the CDMA phone while 4.3 was released for all other products.
On June 6, 2011, Apple previewed iOS 5, Apple TV 4.4 beta and the iOS SDK 5 beta along with iCloud beta among other products. This update introduced iMessage chat between devices running iOS 5, a new notification system, Newsstand subscriptions, Twitter integrated into iOS, Reminders app, Enhancements to AirPlay, full integration with iCloud and over 200 new features. iOS 5.0 supports all iPad models, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM & CDMA, iPhone 4S, and the iPod Touch (3rd & 4th generation).
iOS 5 had only three minor additions, 5.0.1, 5.1, and 5.1.1, which were all provided as OTA and iTunes software updates.
Apple concurrently provides the same version of iOS for the comparable model of iPhone and iPod touch, usually devices released in the same calendar year. iPhone users receive all software updates for free, while iPod Touch users paid for the 2.0 and 3.0 major software updates. As of iOS 4.0, Apple no longer charges money for iPod Touch updates.
As of October 23, 2011, two versions of iOS were never released. iPhone OS 1.2, which after the first beta was replaced by a 2.0 version number; the second beta was called 2.0 beta 2 instead of 1.2 beta 2. The other was iOS 4.2, replaced with 4.2.1 due to a Wi-Fi bug in 4.2 beta 3, causing Apple to release 2 golden masters (4.2 GM and 4.2.1 GM). One version of iOS was pulled back by Apple after being released. iOS 8.0.1 was pulled back by Apple because cellular service and Touch ID were disabled on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
The current version is iOS 8.1.1.

Version history: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch:

iPhone OS 1.x
First iteration of Apple's touch-centric mobile operating system. No official name given on its initial release; Apple marketing literature simply stating the iPhone runs a version of Apple's desktop operating system, OS X. On March 6, 2008, with the release of the iPhone software development kit (iPhone SDK), Apple named it iPhone OS (they went on to rename it "iOS" on June 7, 2010).

iPhone OS 2.x
iPhone OS 2.0, the second major release of iOS, became available on July 11, 2008 with the release of the iPhone 3G. Devices running 1.x are upgradable to this version. This version of the OS introduces the App Store, making third-party applications available to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

iPhone OS 3.x
iPhone OS 3.0 became available with the iPhone 3GS. It was released on June 17, 2009. This release added features such as copy and paste, and MMS. Not all features were available on the original iPhone. Devices running iPhone OS 2.x were upgradeable to this software. The iPad was introduced with iPhone OS 3.2.

iOS 4:
iOS 4 was made available to the public for the iPhone and iPod Touch on June 21, 2010. This is the first major iOS release to drop support for some devices (original iPhone and iPod
touch) and that iPod Touch users do not have to pay for.
The iPhone 3G and iPod Touch (2nd generation) have limited features, including lack of multitasking capabilities and the ability to set a home screen wallpaper, while the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch (3rd & 4th generation) have all features enabled, such as multitasking. The iPhone and iPod Touch (1st generation) cannot run iOS 4.0 and above.
iOS 4.2.1, released November 22, 2010, added iPad compatibility. It also was the last version to support iPhone 3G and iPod Touch (2nd generation, MB & MC model). iOS 4.2.1 replaced iOS 4.2 due to a Wi-Fi bug in iOS 4.2 beta 3, causing Apple to release 2 golden masters (4.2 GM and 4.2.1 GM).

iOS 5:
iOS 5 was previewed to the public on June 6, 2011. It was released for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (GSM and CDMA), iPhone 4S, iPod Touch (3rd & 4th generation), iPad, and iPad 2 on October 12, 2011.
iOS 5.1.1 is the final release supported for the iPad (1st generation) and iPod Touch (3rd generation).

iOS 6:iOS 6 was announced and previewed on June 11, 2012 during Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2012, and its release was stated as Fall 2012. Following the pattern of previous iOS releases, some older devices were no longer supported, specifically the iPod Touch (3rd generation), and the iPad (1st generation). Supported devices include the iPhone 3GS and later; the iPod Touch (4th generation) and later; and the iPad 2 and later.
On September 12, 2012 at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among other items unveiled, Apple announced three iOS-related items: the next generation iPhone 5, the redesigned iPod Touch (5th generation), and the announcement of the release of iOS 6.0 the following week.
iOS 6 was released to the public on September 19, 2012, through iTunes and over-the-air updates.
iOS 6.1.6 is the final release supported for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch (4th generation).

iOS 7 :
Apple announced iOS 7 on June 10, 2013 at its annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) event, with release announced for sometime in Fall (Northern Hemisphere) or Spring (Southern Hemisphere) 2013. At their iPhone event on September 10, 2013, Apple announced the full release of iOS 7 for September 18, 2013, while also unveiling two new iPhone models: the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S. With this release, support was once again dropped for older devices, specifically the iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch (4th generation). Supported devices on this release include the iPhone 4 onwards, iPod Touch (5th generation), the iPad 2 onwards, and the iPad Mini (1st generation) onwards. iOS 7.1.2 is the final release for the iPhone 4. But, Apple can detect an unauthorized install and deactivate the device.

iOS 8 :
Apple announced iOS 8 on June 2, 2014 at its annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) event, with release announced for sometime in Fall (Northern Hemisphere) or

Spring (Southern Hemisphere) 2014. At their iPhone event on September 9, 2014, Apple announced the full release of iOS 8 for September 17, 2014, while also unveiling the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. With this release, Apple resumed the cycle of dropping support for older devices, specifically the iPhone 4. Supported devices on this release include the iPhone 4S onwards, iPod Touch (5th generation), the iPad 2 onwards, and the iPad Mini (1st generation) onwards. The iPad 2 is also the first iOS device to support 5 major releases of iOS, supporting iOS 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. This is the greatest amount of major iOS releases a single iOS device has supported, surpassing the iPhone 4S, which supports 4 major releases (iOS 5, 6, 7, and 8).

However, iOS 8 has limited support for this device, along with the iPhone 4S. The current version is iOS 8.1.1, which fixed a few bugs, improved the performance of iOS on iPhone 4S and iPad 2, and patched Pangu Jailbreak 1.0.02. There are some performance issues in iOS 8.1.1 which are probably caused by bugs affecting the iPad (3rd generation), iPad (4th generation) and the iPad mini. The latest beta version is iOS 8.2 beta 1.

BlackBerry Operating System (OS) BBX™

BlackBerry OS is a proprietary mobile operating system developed by BlackBerry Ltd for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking and supports specialized input devices that have been adopted by BlackBerry Ltd. for use in its handhelds, particularly the trackwheel, trackball, and most recently, the trackpad and touchscreen.
The BlackBerry platform is perhaps best known for its native support for corporate email, through MIDP 1.0 and, more recently, a subset of MIDP 2.0, which allows complete wireless activation and synchronization with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise email, calendar, tasks, notes, and contacts, when used with BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

The operating system also supports WAP 1.2.
Updates to the operating system may be automatically available from wireless carriers that support the BlackBerry over the air software loading (OTASL) service.
Third-party developers can write software using the available BlackBerry API classes, although applications that make use of certain functionality must be digitally signed.
Research from June 2011 indicates that approximately 45% of mobile developers were using the platform at the time of publication.

BlackBerry OS was discontinued after the release of BlackBerry 10[citation needed], but BlackBerry will continue support for the BlackBerry OS.

BlackBerry 10:
BlackBerry 10 is a proprietary mobile operating system developed by BlackBerry Limited for its BlackBerry line of smartphone . Devices running BlackBerry 10 are the Z30, Z10, Z3, Q10, Q5, P'9982, P'9983, the BlackBerry Passport and the upcoming BlackBerry Classic smartphones. BlackBerry 10 is based on the QNX operating system, which is popular in industrial computers and used in many car computers, which was acquired by BlackBerry in April 2010.
When BlackBerry 10.0 was first released, it was the third major release of a QNX based mobile operating system, following the release of BlackBerry Tablet OS with the BlackBerry PlayBook on April 19, 2011, and BlackBerry Tablet OS version 2.0 on February 21, 2012. BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Tablet OS have numerous technical similarities, with BlackBerry 10 providing substantial enhancements over the earlier releases. BlackBerry 10 has continued to improve and evolve as can be seen by the release of newer versions which have added increased features and functionality, free of charge, to the devices.
The BlackBerry 10 operating system uses a combination of gestures and touches for navigation and control, making it possible to enter commands on the BlackBerry 10 operating system without having to press any of the physical buttons, with the exception of the power button that switches the device on/off.

Windows Phone (WP) Smartphone Operating System (OS) by Microsoft

Windows Phone (WP) is a smartphone operating system developed by Microsoft. It is the successor to Windows Mobile, although it is incompatible with the earlier platform. With Windows Phone, Microsoft created a new user interface, featuring a design language named "Modern" (which was formerly known as "Metro"). Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market. It was first launched in October 2010 with Windows Phone 7.
Windows Phone 8.1, which was released in final form to developers on April 14, 2014 and will be pushed out to all phones running Windows Phone 8 over the coming months, is the latest release of the operating system.

Versions:

Windows Phone 7 :
Windows Phone 7 was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, on February 15, 2010, and released publicly on November 8, 2010 in the United States.
Microsoft released an updated version of Windows Phone 7, Mango (also referred to as Windows Phone 7.5), in May 2011. The update included a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9 that supports the same web standards and graphical capability as the desktop version, multi-tasking of third-party apps,  Twitter integration for the People Hub, and  Windows Live SkyDrive access.
A minor update released in 2012 known as "Tango", along with other bug fixes, lowered the hardware requirements to allow for devices with 800 MHz CPUs and 256 MB of RAM to run Windows Phone.
In January 2013, Windows Phone 7.8 was released. It added some features from Windows Phone 8, such as an updated start screen, additional color schemes, and additional wallpaper options. Windows Phone 7.8 was intended to prolong the life of older Windows Phone 7 devices, as these were not upgradable to Windows Phone 8 due to hardware limitations. However, not all users have received the Windows Phone 7.8 update yet.

Windows Phone 8:
On October 29, 2012, Microsoft released Windows Phone 8, a new generation of the operating system. Windows Phone 8 replaces its previously Windows CE-based architecture with one based on the Windows NT kernel with many components shared with Windows 8, allowing applications to be easily ported between the two platforms.

Hardware support
Windows Phone 8, while adding a number of software improvements, also brought support for updated hardware. This included support for multi-core processors and high resolution screens. Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 were often criticized for a lack of high end hardware support, but Windows Phone 8's new hardware gave Windows Phone the ability to better compete with Google and Apple smartphones.

Windows Phone 8.1:
Windows Phone 8.1 was announced on April 2, 2014, after being released in preview form to developers on April 10, 2014. New features added include a notification center, Internet Explorer 11 with tab syncing among Windows 8.1 devices and WP devices, separate volume controls, and the option to skin and add a third column of live tiles to the Start Screen.

Starting with this release, Microsoft has also dropped the requirement that all Windows Phone OEMs include a camera button and physical buttons for back, Start, and Search.
Windows Phone 8.1 also adds "Cortana", a voice assistant much like Siri and Google Now. Cortana replaces the previous Bing search feature, and will be released as a beta in the

United States in the first half of 2014, before expanding to other countries in late 2014 and early 2015.

Symbian closed-source Mobile Operating System (OS)

Symbian was a closed-source mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. Symbian was originally developed by Symbian Ltd., as a descendant of Psion's EPOC and runs exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed. The current form of Symbian is an open-source platform developed by Symbian Foundation in 2009, as the successor of the original Symbian OS. Symbian was used by many major mobile phone brands, like Samsung, Motorola,

Sony Ericsson, and above all by Nokia. It was the most popular smartphone OS on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, when it was overtaken by Android.
Symbian rose to fame from its use with the S60 platform built by Nokia, first released in 2002 and powering most Nokia smartphones. UIQ, another Symbian platform, ran in parallel, but these two platforms were not compatible with each other. Symbian^3, was officially released in Q4 2010 as the successor of S60 and UIQ, first used in the Nokia N8, to use a single platform for the OS. In May 2011 an update, Symbian Anna, was officially announced, followed by Nokia Belle (previously Symbian Belle) in August 2011.
On 11 February 2011, Nokia announced that it would use Microsoft's Windows Phone OS as its primary smartphone platform, and Symbian will be its franchise platform, dropping Symbian as its main smartphone OS of choice. On 22 June 2011 Nokia made an agreement with Accenture for an outsourcing program. Accenture will provide Symbian-based software development and support services to Nokia through 2016; about 2,800 Nokia employees became Accenture employees as of October 2011. The transfer was completed on 30

September 2011. The Nokia 808 PureView is officially the last Symbian smartphone


Symbian UI Variations and Platforms:

Symbian, as it advanced to OS version 7.0, began to spun off into several different user interfaces or UIs, each back by a certain company or group of companies. Unlike Android OS with its different cosmetic UIs, Symbian UIs are deeper in code modifications and integrations (therefore referred to as UI platforms). Things began more complicated when applications developed for different Symbian UIs platforms are not compatible with each other, and this led to OS fragmentation.
User Interfaces platforms that run on or are based on Symbian OS include:

S60, Symbian:
Also called Series 60, it was backed mainly by Nokia. There are several editions of this platform, appearing first as S60 (1st Edition) on Nokia 7650. It was followed by S60 2nd Edition (Nokia N70, S60 3rd Edition (Nokia N73) and touch-based S60 5th Edition (Nokia N97). The name, S60, was dropped after the formation of Symbian Foundation and renames itself as Symbian^1, 2 and 3.

Series 80:
Used by Nokia Communicators such as Nokia 9300i.

Series 90:
Touch and button based. Only phone using this platform is Nokia 7710.

UIQ Backed mainly by Sony Ericsson and then Motorola, it is compatible with both buttons and touch/stylus based inputs. The last major release version is UIQ3.1 in 2008, on Sony Ericsson G900. It was discontinued after the formation of Symbian Foundation, and the decision to consolidate different Symbian UI versions into one led to the adoption of S60 as the version going forward.

MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform) [Japan Only]
Used by Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sony Ericsson and Sharp developed phones for NTT DoCoMo. It uses an interface developed specifically for DoCoMo's FOMA "Freedom of Mobile Access" network brand and is based on the UI from earlier Fujitsu FOMA models. The user cannot install new C++ applications. (Japan Only)
OPP [Japan Only], successor of MOAP, used on NTT DoCoMo's FOMA phone.

Android Mobile Operating System (OS)

Android Versions

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.

Android is the most widely used mobile OS and, as of 2013, the highest selling OS overall. Android devices sell more than Windows, iOS, and Mac OS X devices combined,with sales in 2012, 2013 and 2014 close to the installed base of all PCs.As of July 2013 the Google Play store has had over 1 million Android apps published, and over 50 billion apps 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 1 billion active monthly Android users, up from 538 million in June 2013.
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.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.

Firmware History and Development:

Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger),Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc.),Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile),and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV) to develop, in Rubin's words, "smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences".The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, when it was realized that the market for the devices was not large enough, and diverted their efforts to producing a smartphone operating system to rival those of Symbian and Windows Mobile.Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly, revealing only that it was working on software for mobile phones.That same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope and refused a stake in the company.
Google acquired Android Inc. on August 17, 2005; key employees of Android Inc., including Rubin, Miner, and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition.Not much was known about Android Inc. at the time, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market with this move.At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. Google had lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part.

Since April 2009, Android versions have been developed under a confectionery-themed code name and released in alphabetical order; the exceptions are versions 1.0 and 1.1 as they were not released under specific code names:

Alpha (1.0)
Beta (1.1)
Cupcake (1.5)
Donut (1.6)
Eclair (2.0–2.1)
Froyo (2.2–2.2.3)
Gingerbread (2.3–2.3.7)
Honeycomb (3.0–3.2.6)
Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0–4.0.4)
Jelly Bean (4.1–4.3.1)
KitKat (4.4–4.4.4)
Lollipop (5.0)

Pre-commercial release versions (2007–2008)

Alpha
There were at least two internal releases inside Google and the OHA before the Beta was released in November 2007. For the milestones in internal releases, names of fictional robots were chosen, with various releases code-named "Astro Boy", "Bender" and "R2-D2". Dan Morrill created some of the first mascot logos, but the current green Android logo was designed by Irina Blok.The project manager, Ryan Gibson, conceived of the confections naming scheme that has been used for the majority of the public releases, starting with Android 1.5.

Beta
The Beta was released on November 5, 2007, while the software development kit (SDK) was released on November 12, 2007. The November 5 date is popularly celebrated as Android's "birthday".Public beta versions of the SDK were released in the following order:

November 16, 2007: m3-rc22a
December 14, 2007: m3-rc37a
February 13, 2008: m5-rc14
March 3, 2008: m5-rc15
August 18, 2008: 0.9
September 23, 2008: 1.0-r1

Version history by API level

Android 1.0 (API level 1)
Android 1.1 (API level 2)
Android 1.5 Cupcake (API level 3)
Android 1.6 Donut (API level 4)
Android 2.0 Eclair (API level 5)
Android 2.0.1 Eclair (API level 6)
Android 2.1 Eclair (API level 7)
Android 2.2–2.2.3 Froyo (API level 8)
Android 2.3–2.3.2 Gingerbread (API level 9)
Android 2.3.3–2.3.7 Gingerbread (API level 10)
Android 3.0 Honeycomb (API level 11)
Android 3.1 Honeycomb (API level 12)
Android 3.2 Honeycomb (API level 13)
Android 4.0–4.0.2 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 14)
Android 4.0.3–4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 15)
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (API level 16)
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (API level 17)
Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (API level 18)
Android 4.4 KitKat (API level 19)
Android 4.4 KitKat with wearable extensions (API level 20
Android 5.0 Lollipop (API level 21)

Android 5.0 "Lollipop" was unveiled under the codename "Android L" on June 25, 2014 during Google I/O, and became available as official over-the-air (OTA) updates on November 12, 2014 for select devices that run distributions of Android serviced by Google, including Nexus and Google Play edition devices. Its source code was made available on November 3, 2014.
Lollipop brings a redesigned user interface built around a responsive design language referred to as "material design". Other changes include improvements to the notifications, which can be accessed from the lockscreen and displayed within applications as top-of-the-screen banners. Google also made internal changes to the platform, with the Android Runtime (ART) officially replacing Dalvik for improved application performance, and with changes intended to improve and optimize battery usage, known internally as Project Volta.

CyanogenMod: Open Source Operating System (OS)

Cyanogen Inc. Logo

CyanogenMod  is an open source operating system for smartphones and tablet computers, based on the Android mobile platform. It is developed as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code. Initially, CyanogenMod releases were provided on a nightly, milestone, and "stable version" schedule; as of CyanogenMod 11 M6, the "stable" label will no longer be used, having been supplanted by "milestone" M-builds that are part of the CyanogenMod's rolling release development model.
CyanogenMod offers features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by mobile device vendors. Features supported by CyanogenMod include native theming support,FLAC audio codec support, a large Access Point Name list, an OpenVPN client, Privacy Guard – a per-application permission management app, support for tethering over common interfaces, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, soft buttons and other "tablet tweaks", toggles in the notification pull-down (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS), as well as other interface enhancements. CyanogenMod does not contain spyware or bloatware, according to its developers.CyanogenMod is also stated to increase performance and reliability compared with official firmware releases.

Firmware History and Development

CyanogenMod 7
CyanogenMod 7 firmware is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with additional custom code contributed by the CyanogenMod Team. The custom portions of CyanogenMod are primarily written by Cyanogen (Steve Kondik) but include contributions from the xda-developers community (such as an improved launcher tray, dialer, and browser) and code from established open source projects (such as BusyBox in the shell).
CyanogenMod 7 development began when Google released Android 2.3's source code.On 15 February 2011, the first release candidates of CyanogenMod 7 were rolled out on several of the supported devices.The fourth release candidate was released on 30 March 2011 and brought increased support for the Nook Color and similar devices as well as many bug fixes.On 11 April 2011, the public version of CyanogenMod 7.0 was released, based on Android 2.3.3.CyanogenMod 7.1 was released on 10 October 2011, based on Android 2.3.4.The latest stable version, CyanogenMod 7.2 was released on 16 June 2012, based on Android 2.3.7,bringing a predictive phone dialer, lock-screen updates, ICS animation backports and many bug fixes.

CyanogenMod 8
CyanogenMod version 8 was planned to be based on Android 3.x Honeycomb. However, no source code for Honeycomb was provided by Google until it appeared in the tree history of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich source release. Since Honeycomb was superseded by Ice Cream Sandwich, the release schedule advanced from CyanogenMod 7 directly to CyanogenMod 9.

CyanogenMod 9
CyanogenMod 9 is based on Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.Steve Kondik and his team have announced that they had begun work on the new release after Google released the source code of Android 4.0.1.Development on this release took longer than with previous releases due to the significance of the changes between Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" and 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich", and the team took this opportunity to clarify their vision for the ROM and rethink any modifications which were no longer necessary due to improvements within Android.
By the last days of November 2011, some alpha versions had been distributed, in particular for the Samsung mobile phones Nexus S and Galaxy S. On 9 August 2012, after various betas and release candidates, CyanogenMod released the finished version of CyanogenMod 9.Given that the next version of Android, 4.1 "Jelly Bean", had already been released by that point, development moved swiftly on to CyanogenMod 10. On 29 August 2012, CyanogenMod released a minor update, version 9.1.0, bringing bugfixes and an app called SimplyTapp for NFC payments.
On 4 April 2012, during development, CyanogenMod unveiled "Cid", the new CyanogenMod mascot, which replaced the previous mascot, Andy the skateboarding "bugdroid".Designed by user Ciao, Cid (C.I.D.) is an abbreviation of "Cyanogenmod ID".

CyanogenMod 10
In early July 2012, the CyanogenMod team announced, via its Google+ account, that CyanogenMod 10 would be based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.Nightly builds of CyanogenMod 10 were made available for many devices supported by CyanogenMod 9.Starting with the September 2012 M1 build, the CyanogenMod team began monthly "M-series" releases. At the beginning of each month, a soft freeze of the CyanogenMod codebase is put into effect; once the team deems a build stable enough for daily use, it is released under the milestone or "M" series.
On November 13, 2012, final stable builds were released for several devices.

CyanogenMod 10.1
CyanogenMod 10.1 is based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.Nightly versions are currently being released for an array of devices, along with M Snapshots (Monthly Snapshots) which are being released for select devices.
On June 24, 2013, the CyanogenMod 10.1.0 codebase (based on Android version 4.2.2) was moved to "stable" status, with a majority of currently-supported devices receiving stable builds on the same day.CyanogenMod's developers have indicated that they will continue the Monthly Snapshot schedule to incorporate new features until the next Cyanogenmod release. Unfortunately, many devices utilizing Samsung Exynos and Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC's were not part of the initial release.

CyanogenMod 10.2
The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 10.2, which is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 14 August 2013.It brings in some new enhancements to the system, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and OpenGL ES 3.0 support, a renewed Phone app, 4K resolution support as well as many security and stability improvements.

CyanogenMod 11
On 6 November 2013 the CyanogenMod team started pushing the code of CyanogenMod 11, based on Android 4.4 KitKat, to GitHub.The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 11.0 began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 5 December 2013.Since then, M-builds have been released every month for supported devices, offering a more stable experience than nightlies. With build M6 it was clarified that CyanogenMod would no longer be releasing final builds specially tagged "stable", but instead would utilize the rolling release model with M-builds representing a stable channel.

CyanogenMod 12
CM12 is based on Android 5.0 "Lollipop". On 14 November 2014, the CyanogenMod team announced that they will enable CM12 nightlies by the end of November 2014, or in early December 2014.

Mobile Operating System (OS)

A mobile operating system, also referred to as mobile OS, is an operating system that operates a smartphone, tablet, PDA, or other mobile device. Modern mobile operating systems combine the features of a personal computer operating system with other features, including a touchscreen, cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS mobile navigation, camera, video camera, speech recognition, voice recorder, music player, near field communication and infrared blaster.

Mobile devices with mobile communications capabilities (e.g. smartphones) contain two mobile operating systems - the main user-facing software platform is supplemented by a second low-level proprietary real-time operating system which operates the radio and other hardware. Research has shown that these low-level systems may contain a range of security vulnerabilities permitting malicious base stations to gain high levels of control over the mobile device.

History:

• Mobile operating system milestones mirror the development of mobile phones and smartphones:
• 1973 1993 Mobile phones use embedded systems to control operation.
• 1995 The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, has a touchscreen, email and PDA features.
• 1996 Palm Pilot 1000 personal digital assistant is introduced with the Palm OS mobile operating system.
• 1996 First Windows CE Handheld PC devices are introduced.
• 1999 Nokia S40 OS is officially introduced along with the Nokia 7110
• 2000 Symbian becomes the first modern mobile OS on a smartphone with the launch of the Ericsson R380.
• 2001 The Kyocera 6035 is the first smartphone with Palm OS.
• 2002 Microsoft's first Windows CE (Pocket PC) smartphones are introduced.
• 2002 BlackBerry releases its first smartphone.
• 2005 Nokia introduces Maemo OS on the first internet tablet N770.
• 2007 Apple iPhone with iOS is introduced as an iPhone, "mobile phone" and "internet communicator."
• 2007 Open Handset Alliance (OHA) formed by Google, HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc.
• 2008 OHA releases Android 1.0 with the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) as the first Android phone.
• 2009 Palm introduces webOS with the Palm Pre. By 2012 webOS devices were no longer sold.
• 2009 Samsung announces the Bada OS with the introduction of the Samsung S8500.
• 2010 Windows Phone OS phones are released but are not compatible with the previous Windows Mobile OS.
• 2011 MeeGo the first mobile Linux, combining Maemo and Moblin, is introduced with the Nokia N9, a collaboration of Nokia, Intel and Linux Foundation.
• 2011 In September 2011 Samsung, Intel and the Linux Foundation announced that their efforts will shift from Bada, MeeGo to Tizen during 2011 and 2012.
• 2011 In October 2011 the Mer project was announced, centered around an ultra-portable Linux + HTML5/QML/JavaScript Core for building products with, derived from the MeeGo codebase.
• 2012 Mozilla announced in July 2012 that the project previously known as "Boot to Gecko" was now Firefox OS and had several handset OEMs on board.
• 2013 Canonical announced Ubuntu Touch, a version of the Linux distribution expressly designed for smartphones. The OS is built on the Android Linux kernel, using Android drivers, but does not use any of the Java-like code of Android.
• 2013 BlackBerry released their new operating system for smartphones and tablets, BlackBerry 10.
• 2013 Google release latest version of Android Kitkat.
• 2014 Microsoft release Windows Phone 8.1 in February 2014.
• 2014 Apple release iOS 8 in September 2014.
• 2014 BlackBerry release BlackBerry 10.3 in September 2014.
• 2014 Google release Android Lollipop in November 2014.

Android:
Android (based on the Linux Kernel) is from Google Inc.. It has the largest installed base worldwide on smartphones. Most of Android is free and open source,but a large amount of software on Android devices (such as Play Store, Google Search, Google Play Services, Google Music, and so on) are proprietary and licensed.Android's releases prior to 2.0 (1.0, 1.5, 1.6) were used exclusively on mobile phones. Android 2.x releases were mostly used for mobile phones but also some tablets. Android 3.0 was a tablet-oriented release and does not officially run on mobile phones. The current Android version is 4.4 Android's releases are nicknamed after sweets or dessert items like Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0), Frozen Yogurt ("Froyo") (2.2), Ginger Bread (2.3), Honeycomb (3.0), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), Jelly Bean (4.1), (4.2), (4.3) Kit Kat (4.4), and Lollipop (5.0). Most major mobile service providers carry an Android device. Since HTC Dream was introduced, there has been an explosion in the number of devices that carry Android OS. From second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, Android's worldwide market share rose 850% from 1.8% to 17.2%. On November 15, 2011, Android reached 52.5% of the global smartphone market share.On September 2014 Android's global market share rose to 85%.

iOS:
iOS is from Apple Inc.. It has second largest installed base worldwide on smartphones behind Android. It is closed source and proprietary and built on open source Darwin core OS. The Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and second-generation Apple TV all use an operating system called iOS, which is derived from Mac OS X. Native third party applications were not officially supported until the release of iOS 2.0 on July 11, 2008. Before this, "jailbreaking" allowed third party applications to be installed, and this method is still available. Currently all iOS devices are developed by Apple and manufactured by Foxconn or another of Apple's partners. As of September 2014, iOS global market share was 11%.

Windows Phone:
Windows Phone is from Microsoft. It is closed source and proprietary. It has third largest installed base on smartphones behind Android and iOS. On February 15, 2010, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile OS, Windows Phone. The new mobile OS includes a completely new over-hauled UI inspired by Microsoft's "Metro Design Language". It includes full integration of Microsoft services such as OneDrive and Office, Xbox Music, Xbox Video, Xbox Live games and Bing, but also integrates with many other non-Microsoft services such as Facebook and Google accounts. Windows Phone devices are made primarily by Nokia, along with HTC, Samsung. As of September 2014, Windows Phone market share was 3%.

Blackberry:
BlackBerry 10 (based on the QNX OS) is from BlackBerry. As a smart phone OS, it is closed source and proprietary. It is used mostly by Government employees. BlackBerry 10 is the next generation platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. All phones and tablets are manufactured by Blackberry itself. Once one of the dominant platforms in the world, it's global market share has been reduced to less than 1% in late 2014.

Firefox OS:
Firefox OS is from Mozilla. It is open source and uses Mozilla Public License. According to Ars Technica, "Mozilla says that B2G is motivated by a desire to demonstrate that the standards-based open Web has the potential to be a competitive alternative to the existing single-vendor application development stacks offered by the dominant mobile operating systems."

Sailfish OS:
Sailfish OS is from Jolla. It is partly open source and adopts GPL (core and middleware), however the user interface is closed source. After Nokia failed in 2011 with the MeeGo project most of the MeeGo team have left Nokia, and established Jolla as a company to use MeeGo and MER business opportunities. In 2012 Linux Sailfish OS based on MeeGo and using MER core distribution has been launched for public use. The first device, Jolla (mobile phone) was unveiled on 20 May 2013.

Tizen:
Tizen is hosted by the Linux Foundation and support from the Tizen Association, guided by a Technical Steering Group composed of Intel and Samsung. Tizen is an operating system for devices including smartphones, tablets, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) devices, and smart TVs. It is an open source system that aims to offer a consistent user experience across devices. Tizen's main components are the Linux kernel and the WebKit runtime. According to Intel, Tizen “combines the best of LiMo and MeeGo." HTML5apps are emphasized, with MeeGo encouraging its members to transition to Tizen, stating that the "future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5." Tizen will be targeted at a variety of platforms such as handsets, tablets, smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment.On May 17, 2013, Tizen released version 2.1, code-named Nectarine.

Ubuntu Touch OS:
Ubuntu Touch OS is from Canonical Ltd.. It is open source and uses the GPL license.


Discontinued software platforms:

Symbian:
the Symbian platform was developed by Nokia for certain models of smartphones. It is proprietary software. The operating system was discontinued in 2012, although a slimmed down version for basic phones was still developed until July 2014. Microsoft officially shelved the platform in favor of Windows Phone after the acquisition of Nokia.

Windows Mobile:
Windows Mobile was from Microsoft. It was closed source and proprietary. The Windows CE operating system and Windows Mobile middleware are widely spread in Asia. The two improved variants of this operating system, Windows Mobile 6 Professional (for touch screen devices) and Windows Mobile 6 Standard, were unveiled in February 2007. It was criticized for having a user interface which is not optimized for touch input by fingers; instead, it is more usable with a stylus. However, unlike iOS, it supports both touch screen and physical keyboard configurations. Windows Mobile's market share sharply declined to just 5% in Q2 of 2010.Microsoft phased out the Windows Mobile OS to focus on Windows Phone.

Palm OS:
Palm OS/Garnet OS was from Access Co. It is closed source and proprietary. webOS was introduced by Palm in January 2009 as the successor to Palm OS with Web 2.0 technologies, open architecture and multitasking capabilities.

webOS:
webOS was from LG, although some parts are open source. webOS is a proprietary mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel, initially developed by Palm, which launched with the Palm Pre. After being acquired by HP, two phones (the Veer and the Pre 3) and a tablet (the TouchPad) running webOS were introduced in 2011. On August 18, 2011, HP announced that webOS hardware was to be discontinued but would continue to support and update webOS software and develop the webOS ecosystem. HP released webOS as open source under the name Open webOS, and plans to update it with additional features. On February 25, 2013 HP announced the sale of WebOS to LG Electronics, who planned to use the operating system for its "smart" or Internet-connected TVs. However HP retained patents underlying WebOS as well as cloud-based services such as the App Catalog.

Maemo:
Maemo was a platform developed by Nokia for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is open source and GPL, based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager and the GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework.

MeeGo:
MeeGo was from non-profit organization The Linux Foundation. It is open source and GPL. At the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia and Intel both unveiled 'MeeGo', a mobile operating system that combined Moblin and Maemo to create an open-sourced experience for users across all devices. In 2011 Nokia announced that it would no longer pursue MeeGo in favor of Windows Phone. Nokia announced the Nokia N9 on June 21, 2011 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. LG announced its support for the platform.

LiMo:
LiMo was from the LiMo Foundation. LiMo Foundation launched LiMo 4 on February 14, 2011. LiMo 4 delivers middleware and application functionality, including a flexible user interface, extended widget libraries, 3D window effects, advanced multimedia, social networking and location-based service frameworks, sensor frameworks, multi-tasking and multi-touch capabilities. In addition, support for scalable screen resolution and consistent APIs means that the platform can deliver a consistent user experience across multiple device types and form factors.