Android Glossary

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Here are some Android terms (some even with definitions!!)

adb 
Android Debug
ADP1 
Android Developer Phone 1
Android 
A robot resembling a human being - the name of the operating system produced by Google for mobile phones. Apparently, Andy Rubin, one of the original founders of Android, Inc. loves robots.
ASE 
Android Scripting Environment
binder 
A fast
Bionic 
small C library used in Android devices
Bootchart 
A mechanism to create visual charts of a Linux boot sequence, including the timing of process start and execution.
Dalvik 
Virtual Machine in which Android applications are run. This VM executes Dalvik bytecode, which is compiled from programs written in the Java language. Note that the Dalvik VM is not a Java VM (JVM).
Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool.
Dream 
Code name for the mobile phone hardware publicly called the t-Mobile G1, in the United States.
fastboot 
a program which communicates with the developer firmware, and which is capable of loading new software on the ADP1 phone (including re-writing the flash partitions on the device).
FreeType 
An open-source set of fonts and font system
G1 
The name of the first Android-based mobile phone, from t-Mobile.
init 
the first user-space program run in the Android system
Java 
 ???
JDK 
Java Development Kit
Linux 
An open source operating system kernel, developed originally by Linus Torvalds, but over time by many thousands of developers worldwide.
MSM 
 ???
OpenGL ES 
3D graphics system and API for Android applications
Saphire
SGL 
2D graphics layer for Android applications
  • SQLite - a powerful and lightweight relational database engine used by the Android system components, and available to all Android applications.
Trout 
another hardware code name
wakelocks 
A kernel mechanism for Android power management. When a thread holds a wakelock, the kernel will refrain from entering a low-power state.