Android Services Black Magic

The most interesting part of Android stack are the Android System Services. The 50+ such services expose the low level functionality, such as Power Management, Wifi, Camera, Sensors, GPS, Display, Audio, Media, and so on, all the hardware all the way up to the application layer. While each one is different, the all have certain similarities, namely the way they rely on Binder (Android’s IPC mechanism), use JNI to cross Java-C boundary, and use of shared libraries to abstract the Linux drivers. In this talk, we’ll explore the common system services in Android and discuss their architecture. You will get to see the diagrams of the inner workings of some of the previously undocumented parts of the Android stack. By the end of the talk, you should have a better understanding of the underpinnings of the backbone of Android OS. Aleksandar (Saša) Gargenta Aleksandar (Saša) Gargenta is the technology brains at Marakana. Always on top of the latest in software, Aleksandar is the company's radar for technology that matters. His latest ventures are perfecting Marakana's Android Internals and Security courses. In his spare time Aleksandar runs the San Francisco Java, Android, and HTML5 User Groups with over three thousand members across the three groups. Aleksandar holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. He is also a father, photographer, hiker, and a race-car driver :-) As an Android and Java expert, Aleksandar is the author of Marakana's Java, Advanced Java, Android Internals, Android Security, Spring/Hibernate, JBoss, Apache, XML/XSL, and JUnit/TestNG training courses.