Setting up of Development Environment

Before we jump on to the driver seat let me tell you the anatomy of the Android. The following are the components of an android application –

1) Activity – Every screen on your mobile can be called as an activity. This will be an extension of the     Activity base class.

2) Services-Services are like back stage people which will help in the working of an application.

3) Content Providers -  Sometimes applications need to share data with other applications like your custom made app may require accessing data from the contacts, this is made possible with the help of content providers. The content provider provides a class through which applications can send or receive data.

4) Intent- When an application wants to share data or information from screen to another it uses Intents.

5) Broadcast Receivers- These are used to make your application perform specific activities when certain events occur. For example, on receiving a particular kind of sms you might want your application to start.

Now that we know what an application consists we are in a better position to create it. Android requires the following software’s to be installed on your system

1) Java – You will require Java 1.6 and above, you can download the Java in the following location SDK 

2) IDE – You will require Eclipse IDE for developing the android application Eclipse IDE

3) Android SDK – You can download the SDK from the and set up the android development environment as described in the following link – Android SDK

The system requirements of android is provided in the following link – System Requirements