Android - Technically, What Is It?

Android - Technically what is it?

(an overivew of what is Android and its uniqueness is discussed in another post below)
1. It is an operating system for mobile
2. Interestingly, it is not yet another OS, but component based
   OS
3. It has an integrated Java Virtual Machine
4. System interfaces are exposed only through Java libraries
5. It is based on the Linux Kernel
6. An Android SDK is provided to let developers build applications on top of the OS but not extend the OS itself
7. The SDK includes
   
   • Android packages
   • sample files
   • Documentation
   • A Simulator

The offical site of Android broadly classfies the technical parts of the OS as
consisting of

1. Linux Kernel
2. Android Runtime
3. Libraries
4. Application Framework

over which the core applications run as well as the applications developed by anyone using this framework