Back in 2005, Google started investing money in start-up companies that it thought would be profitable in the future. Android Inc., founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White, was one such company acquired by Google that later turned out to be the best deal ever. During its first two years, Android Inc.
operated under secrecy. It described itself as a company making software for mobile phones. Rubin later stayed with Google to pioneer Android as an operating system that revolutionized the way mobile handsets operate. With this acquisition, it was clear that Google was eyeing the mobile phone market. Android training
At Google, Rubin, along with his team, developed a powerful and flexible operating system built on a Linux kernel. There was speculation everywhere about what Google was trying to do. Some reported that Google was trying to incorporate search and other applications into mobile handsets. A few others reported that Google was developing its mobile handset.
Finally, in 2007, Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a group of technology companies, device manufacturers, chipset makers, and wireless carriers, was formed with the main objective of proposing open standards for the mobile platform. Together, they developed Android—the first open and free mobile platform built on Linux kernel 2.6. Later, in 2008, the HTC Dream was released, which was the first phone to run the Android operating system.
After that, it was a dream run for Android, with it's market share increasing exponentially over the next few years. At the time of writing this book, Android remains by far the most used OS throughout the world.
According to IDC, in the first quarter of 2017, Android dominated the industry with an 85% market share. Since its release in 2007, Android has come up with various versions. The most recent major Android update is Android 8.0, dubbed Oreo, which was released on August 2017. Several versions of its Linux-based OS have been released in alphabetical order.
The Android model
To effectively understand the forensic concepts of Android, it would be helpful to have a basic understanding of the Android architecture. Just like a computer, any computing system that interacts with the user and performs complicated tasks requires an operating system to handle the tasks effectively.
This operating system takes the responsibility of managing the resources of the system and to provide a way for the applications to talk to the hardware or physical components to accomplish certain tasks. Android is currently the most popular mobile operating system designed to power mobile devices. You can find out more about this at https://developer.android.com/about/android.html
