Exploring interesting features in Android

I've been playing around with Android lately (which brings me right back to Java - I may have to change this blog's tag line) and it has some very interesting, innovative concepts behind it. Like the iPhone OS its application model has been developed from scratch, rather than relying on decade-old technologies like desktop apps. I'm sure that some of these concepts will migrate back to the desktop at some time, in fact, I believe that's exactly what Apple is trying to push along with the iPad (including the dubious benefits of a completely closed and company-controlled App Store).

Two innovations are pretty cool in Android. First applications are broken up into components, rather than being a monolithic unit. What the user perceives as an application, is a so-called task, which can be comprised of components belonging to multiple applications. For example an app can borrow a browser window from the Browser app. That is different from the iPhone: here browser integration happens via a OS-level widget. And of course, Apple alone determines which services should be available, while on Android any application can offer its services to others.

The other interesting functionality is Android's management of background applications. I've kind of agreed with Apple: burdening the user with managing which applications are active and take memory and battery power is not a good idea. But Android got an elegant way around it: It can shut down applications as needed. If they manage their state correctly, the user wouldn't even see the difference between an active or an re-launched application. Also, Android can shut down different parts of the applications separately: for example terminate UI components, while leave the background process running.

Giving the OS the ability to shut down apps would be useful on the desktop too. How many users end up with a dock or a task bar full of active applications until - if they don't routinely reboot - the computer starts getting sluggish.