Android (operating system)
Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google. It is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, is designed for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, Wear OS for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are used on game consoles, digital cameras, PCs and other electronics. Developed by Android Inc. which Google bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008. The operating system has since gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 9 "Pie", released in August 2018. Google released the first Android Q beta on all Pixel phones on March 13, 2019; the core Android source code is known as Android Open Source Project, is licensed under the Apache License. Android is associated with a suite of proprietary software developed by Google, called Google Mobile Services that frequently comes pre-installed in devices, which includes the Google Chrome web browser and Google Search and always includes core apps for services such as Gmail, as well as the application store and digital distribution platform Google Play, associated development platform.
These apps are licensed by manufacturers of Android devices certified under standards imposed by Google, but AOSP has been used as the basis of competing Android ecosystems, such as Amazon.com's Fire OS, which use their own equivalents to GMS. Android has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013; as of May 2017, it has over two billion monthly active users, the largest installed base of any operating system, as of December 2018, the Google Play store features over 2.6 million apps. The name Andrew and the noun Android share the Greek root andros. Andy Rubin picked android.com as his personal website, his colleagues used Android as his nickname at work. That became the name of the company he founded, the name of the operating system they developed. Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Chris White. Rubin described the Android project as "tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences".
The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, this was the basis of its pitch to investors in April 2004. The company decided that the market for cameras was not large enough for its goals, by five months it had diverted its efforts and was pitching Android as a handset operating system that would rival Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Rubin had difficulty attracting investors early on, Android was facing eviction from its office space. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope, shortly thereafter wired an undisclosed amount as seed funding. Perlman refused a stake in the company, has stated "I did it because I believed in the thing, I wanted to help Andy."In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million. Its key employees, including Rubin and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. Not much was known about the secretive Android at the time, with the company having provided few details other than that it was making software for mobile phones.
At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system. Google had "lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation". Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to build through December 2006. An early prototype had a close resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, but the arrival of 2007's Apple iPhone meant that Android "had to go back to the drawing board". Google changed its Android specification documents to state that "Touchscreens will be supported", although "the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot replace physical buttons". By 2008, both Nokia and BlackBerry announced touch-based smartphones to rival the iPhone 3G, Android's focus switched to just touchscreens.
The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23, 2008. On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies including Google, device manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung, wireless carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile, chipset makers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, unveiled itself, with a goal to develop "the first open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices". Within a year, the Open Handset Alliance faced two other open source competitors, the Symbian Foundation and the LiMo Foundation, the latter developing a Linux-based mobile operating system like Google. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have incrementally improved the operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases.
Each major release is named in alphabetical order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called "Cupcake", "Donut"
C++
C++ is a general-purpose programming language, developed by Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C language, or "C with Classes". It has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while providing facilities for low-level memory manipulation, it is always implemented as a compiled language, many vendors provide C++ compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, Intel, IBM, so it is available on many platforms. C++ was designed with a bias toward system programming and embedded, resource-constrained software and large systems, with performance and flexibility of use as its design highlights. C++ has been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications and performance-critical applications. C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization, with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2017 as ISO/IEC 14882:2017.
The C++ programming language was standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, amended by the C++03, C++11 and C++14 standards. The current C++ 17 standard supersedes these with an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979 as an extension of the C language. C++20 is the next planned standard, keeping with the current trend of a new version every three years. In 1979, Bjarne Stroustrup, a Danish computer scientist, began work on "C with Classes", the predecessor to C++; the motivation for creating a new language originated from Stroustrup's experience in programming for his Ph. D. thesis. Stroustrup found that Simula had features that were helpful for large software development, but the language was too slow for practical use, while BCPL was fast but too low-level to be suitable for large software development; when Stroustrup started working in AT&T Bell Labs, he had the problem of analyzing the UNIX kernel with respect to distributed computing.
Remembering his Ph. D. experience, Stroustrup set out to enhance the C language with Simula-like features. C was chosen because it was general-purpose, fast and used; as well as C and Simula's influences, other languages influenced C++, including ALGOL 68, Ada, CLU and ML. Stroustrup's "C with Classes" added features to the C compiler, including classes, derived classes, strong typing and default arguments. In 1983, "C with Classes" was renamed to "C++", adding new features that included virtual functions, function name and operator overloading, constants, type-safe free-store memory allocation, improved type checking, BCPL style single-line comments with two forward slashes. Furthermore, it included the development of a standalone compiler for Cfront. In 1985, the first edition of The C++ Programming Language was released, which became the definitive reference for the language, as there was not yet an official standard; the first commercial implementation of C++ was released in October of the same year.
In 1989, C++ 2.0 was released, followed by the updated second edition of The C++ Programming Language in 1991. New features in 2.0 included multiple inheritance, abstract classes, static member functions, const member functions, protected members. In 1990, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual was published; this work became the basis for the future standard. Feature additions included templates, namespaces, new casts, a boolean type. After the 2.0 update, C++ evolved slowly until, in 2011, the C++11 standard was released, adding numerous new features, enlarging the standard library further, providing more facilities to C++ programmers. After a minor C++14 update released in December 2014, various new additions were introduced in C++17, further changes planned for 2020; as of 2017, C++ remains the third most popular programming language, behind Java and C. On January 3, 2018, Stroustrup was announced as the 2018 winner of the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering, "for conceptualizing and developing the C++ programming language".
According to Stroustrup: "the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C". This name is credited to Rick Mascitti and was first used in December 1983; when Mascitti was questioned informally in 1992 about the naming, he indicated that it was given in a tongue-in-cheek spirit. The name comes from C's ++ operator and a common naming convention of using "+" to indicate an enhanced computer program. During C++'s development period, the language had been referred to as "new C" and "C with Classes" before acquiring its final name. Throughout C++'s life, its development and evolution has been guided by a set of principles: It must be driven by actual problems and its features should be useful in real world programs; every feature should be implementable. Programmers should be free to pick their own programming style, that style should be supported by C++. Allowing a useful feature is more important than preventing every possible misuse of C++, it should provide facilities for organising programs into separate, well-defined parts, provide facilities for combining separately developed parts.
No implicit violations of the type system (but allow explicit violations.
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, whilst the machine feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, process controls; the design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. The goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface which makes it easy and enjoyable to operate a machine in the way which produces the desired result; this means that the operator needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output, that the machine minimizes undesired outputs to the human. User interfaces are composed of one or more layers including a human-machine interface interfaces machines with physical input hardware such a keyboards, game pads and output hardware such as computer monitors and printers.
A device that implements a HMI is called a human interface device. Other terms for human-machine interfaces are man–machine interface and when the machine in question is a computer human–computer interface. Additional UI layers may interact with one or more human sense, including: tactile UI, visual UI, auditory UI, olfactory UI, equilibrial UI, gustatory UI. Composite user interfaces are UIs that interact with two or more senses; the most common CUI is a graphical user interface, composed of a tactile UI and a visual UI capable of displaying graphics. When sound is added to a GUI it becomes a multimedia user interface. There are three broad categories of CUI: standard and augmented. Standard composite user interfaces use standard human interface devices like keyboards and computer monitors; when the CUI blocks out the real world to create a virtual reality, the CUI is virtual and uses a virtual reality interface. When the CUI does not block out the real world and creates augmented reality, the CUI is augmented and uses an augmented reality interface.
When a UI interacts with all human senses, it is called a qualia interface, named after the theory of qualia. CUI may be classified by how many senses they interact with as either an X-sense virtual reality interface or X-sense augmented reality interface, where X is the number of senses interfaced with. For example, a Smell-O-Vision is a 3-sense Standard CUI with visual display and smells; the user interface or human–machine interface is the part of the machine that handles the human–machine interaction. Membrane switches, rubber keypads and touchscreens are examples of the physical part of the Human Machine Interface which we can see and touch. In complex systems, the human–machine interface is computerized; the term human–computer interface refers to this kind of system. In the context of computing, the term extends as well to the software dedicated to control the physical elements used for human-computer interaction; the engineering of the human–machine interfaces is enhanced by considering ergonomics.
The corresponding disciplines are human factors engineering and usability engineering, part of systems engineering. Tools used for incorporating human factors in the interface design are developed based on knowledge of computer science, such as computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages. Nowadays, we use the expression graphical user interface for human–machine interface on computers, as nearly all of them are now using graphics. There is a difference between a user interface and an operator interface or a human–machine interface; the term "user interface" is used in the context of computer systems and electronic devices Where a network of equipment or computers are interlinked through an MES -or Host to display information. A human-machine interface is local to one machine or piece of equipment, is the interface method between the human and the equipment/machine. An operator interface is the interface method by which multiple equipment that are linked by a host control system is accessed or controlled.
The system may expose several user interfaces to serve different kinds of users. For example, a computerized library database might provide two user interfaces, one for library patrons and the other for library personnel; the user interface of a mechanical system, a vehicle or an industrial installation is sometimes referred to as the human–machine interface. HMI is a modification of the original term MMI. In practice, the abbreviation MMI is still used although some may claim that MMI stands for something different now. Another abbreviation is HCI, but is more used for human–computer interaction. Other terms used are operator interface terminal; however it is abbreviated, the terms refer to the'layer' that separates a human, operating a machine from the machine itself. Without a clean and usable interface, humans would not be able to
Smartphone
Smartphones are a class of mobile phones and of multi-purpose mobile computing devices. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which facilitate wider software and multimedia functionality, alongside core phone functions such as voice calls and text messaging. Smartphones include various sensors that can be leveraged by their software, such as a magnetometer, proximity sensors, barometer and accelerometer, support wireless communications protocols such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, satellite navigation. Early smartphones were marketed towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of standalone personal digital assistant devices with support for cellular telephony, but were limited by their battery life, bulky form, the immaturity of wireless data services. In the 2000s, BlackBerry, Nokia's Symbian platform, Windows Mobile began to gain market traction, with models featuring QWERTY keyboards or resistive touchscreen input, emphasizing access to push email and wireless internet.
Since the unveiling of the iPhone in 2007, the majority of smartphones have featured thin, slate-like form factors, with large, capacitive screens with support for multi-touch gestures rather than physical keyboards, offer the ability for users to download or purchase additional applications from a centralized store, use cloud storage and synchronization, virtual assistants, as well as mobile payment services. Improved hardware and faster wireless communication have bolstered the growth of the smartphone industry. In the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use worldwide. Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for feature phones in early 2013; the first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Frank Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. A refined version was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator.
In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls, the touchscreen-equipped Simon could send and receive faxes and emails. It included an address book, appointment scheduler, world time clock, notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news; the term "smart phone" or "smartphone" was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as 1995, describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator. Beginning in the mid-late 1990s, many people who had mobile phones carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS, Newton OS, Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC; these operating systems would evolve into early mobile operating systems. Most of the "smartphones" in this era were hybrid devices that combined these existing familiar PDA OSes with basic phone hardware; the results were devices that were bulkier than either dedicated mobile phones or PDAs, but allowed a limited amount of cellular Internet access.
The trend at the time, that manufacturers competed on in both mobile phones and PDAs was to make devices smaller and slimmer. The bulk of these smartphones combined with their high cost and expensive data plans, plus other drawbacks such as expansion limitations and decreased battery life compared to separate standalone devices limited their popularity to "early adopters" and business users who needed portable connectivity. In March 1996, Hewlett-Packard released the OmniGo 700LX, a modified HP 200LX palmtop PC with a Nokia 2110 mobile phone piggybacked onto it and ROM-based software to support it, it had a 640×200 resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls, to create and receive text messages and faxes. It was 100% DOS 5.0 compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows. In August 1996, Nokia released the Nokia 9000 Communicator, a digital cellular PDA based on the Nokia 2110 with an integrated system based on the PEN/GEOS 3.0 operating system from Geoworks.
The two components were attached by a hinge in what became known as a clamshell design, with the display above and a physical QWERTY keyboard below. The PDA provided e-mail; when closed, the device could be used as a digital cellular telephone. In June 1999 Qualcomm released the "pdQ Smartphone", a CDMA digital PCS smartphone with an integrated Palm PDA and Internet connectivity. Subsequent landmark devices included: The Ericsson R380 by Ericsson Mobile Communications; the first device marketed as a "smartphone", it was the first Symbian-based phone, with PDA functionality and limited Web browsing on a resistive touchscreen utilizing a stylus. Users could not install their own software on the device, however; the Kyocera 6035, a dual-nature device with a separate Palm OS PDA operating system and CDMA mobile phone firmware. It supported limited Web browsing with the PDA software treating the phone hardware as an attached modem. Handspring's Treo 180, the first smartphone that integrated the Palm OS on a GSM mobile phone having telephony, SMS messaging and Internet access built in to the OS.
The 180 model had a thumb-type keyboard and the 180g version had a Graffiti handwriting recognition area, instead. In 1999, Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo launched i-mode, a new
Berkeley Software Distribution
The Berkeley Software Distribution was an operating system based on Research Unix and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Today, "BSD" refers to its descendants, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonFly BSD. BSD was called Berkeley Unix because it was based on the source code of the original Unix developed at Bell Labs. In the 1980s, BSD was adopted by workstation vendors in the form of proprietary Unix variants such as DEC Ultrix and Sun Microsystems SunOS due to its permissive licensing and familiarity to many technology company founders and engineers. Although these proprietary BSD derivatives were superseded in the 1990s by UNIX SVR4 and OSF/1 releases provided the basis for several open-source operating systems including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, TrueOS. These, in turn, have been used by proprietary operating systems, including Apple's macOS and iOS, which derived from them, Microsoft Windows, which used a part of its TCP/IP code.
The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the operating system, allowing researchers at universities to modify and extend Unix. The operating system arrived at Berkeley in 1974, at the request of computer science professor Bob Fabry, on the program committee for the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles where Unix was first presented. A PDP-11/45 was bought to run the system, but for budgetary reasons, this machine was shared with the mathematics and statistics groups at Berkeley, who used RSTS, so that Unix only ran on the machine eight hours per day. A larger PDP-11/70 was installed at Berkeley the following year, using money from the Ingres database project. In 1975, Ken Thompson came to Berkeley as a visiting professor, he started working on a Pascal implementation for the system. Graduate students Chuck Haley and Bill Joy improved Thompson's Pascal and implemented an improved text editor, ex. Other universities became interested in the software at Berkeley, so in 1977 Joy started compiling the first Berkeley Software Distribution, released on March 9, 1978.
1BSD was an add-on to Version 6 Unix rather than a complete operating system in its own right. Some thirty copies were sent out; the second Berkeley Software Distribution, released in May 1979, included updated versions of the 1BSD software as well as two new programs by Joy that persist on Unix systems to this day: the vi text editor and the C shell. Some 75 copies of 2BSD were sent out by Bill Joy. A VAX computer was installed at Berkeley in 1978, but the port of Unix to the VAX architecture, UNIX/32V, did not take advantage of the VAX's virtual memory capabilities; the kernel of 32V was rewritten by Berkeley students to include a virtual memory implementation, a complete operating system including the new kernel, ports of the 2BSD utilities to the VAX, the utilities from 32V was released as 3BSD at the end of 1979. 3BSD was alternatively called Virtual VAX/UNIX or VMUNIX, BSD kernel images were called /vmunix until 4.4BSD. After 4.3BSD was released in June 1986, it was determined that BSD would move away from the aging VAX platform.
The Power 6/32 platform developed by Computer Consoles Inc. seemed promising at the time, but was abandoned by its developers shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, the 4.3BSD-Tahoe port proved valuable, as it led to a separation of machine-dependent and machine-independent code in BSD which would improve the system's future portability. In addition to portability, the CSRG worked on an implementation of the OSI network protocol stack, improvements to the kernel virtual memory system and new TCP/IP algorithms to accommodate the growth of the Internet; until all versions of BSD used proprietary AT&T Unix code, were therefore subject to an AT&T software license. Source code licenses had become expensive and several outside parties had expressed interest in a separate release of the networking code, developed outside AT&T and would not be subject to the licensing requirement; this led to Networking Release 1, made available to non-licensees of AT&T code and was redistributable under the terms of the BSD license.
It was released in June 1989. After Net/1, BSD developer Keith Bostic proposed that more non-AT&T sections of the BSD system be released under the same license as Net/1. To this end, he started a project to reimplement most of the standard Unix utilities without using the AT&T code. Within eighteen months, all of the AT&T utilities had been replaced, it was determined that only a few AT&T files remained in the kernel; these files were removed, the result was the June 1991 release of Networking Release 2, a nearly complete operating system, distributable. Net/2 was the basis for two separate ports of BSD to the Intel 80386 architecture: the free 386BSD by William Jolitz and the proprietary BSD/386 by Berkeley Software Design. 386BSD itself was short-lived, but became the initial code base of the NetBSD and FreeBSD projects that were started shortly thereafter. BSDi soon found itself in legal trouble with AT&T's Unix System Laboratories subsidiary the owners of the System V copyright and the Unix trademark.
The USL v. BSDi lawsuit was filed in 1992 and led to an injunction on the distribution of Net/2 until the validity of USL's copyright claims on the source could be determined; the lawsuit slowed development of the free-
Vodafone
Vodafone Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications conglomerate, with headquarters in London and Newbury, Berkshire. It predominantly operates services in the regions of Asia, Africa and Oceania. Among mobile operator groups globally, Vodafone ranked 4th in the number of mobile customers as of 2018. Vodafone owns and operates networks in 25 countries, has partner networks in 47 further countries, its Vodafone Global Enterprise division provides telecommunications and IT services to corporate clients in 150 countries. Vodafone has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, it had a market capitalisation of £52.5 billion as of 10 February 2016, the eighth-largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company has a secondary listing on NASDAQ; the name Vodafone comes from voice data fone, chosen by the company to "reflect the provision of voice and data services over mobile phones". The evolution of Vodafone started in 1982 with the establishment of the Racal Strategic Radio Ltd subsidiary of Racal Electronics, the UK's largest maker of military radio technology, which formed a joint venture with Millicom called'Racal', which evolved into the present day Vodafone.
In 1980, Ernest Harrison, the chairman of Racal Electronics, agreed to a deal with Lord Weinstock of the General Electric Company to allow Racal to access some of GEC's tactical battlefield radio technology. The head of Racal's military radio division, Gerry Whent, was briefed by Ernest Harrison to drive the company into commercial mobile radio. Whent visited a mobile radio factory run by General Electric in Virginia, USA the same year to understand the commercial use of military radio technology. Jan Stenbeck, head of a growing Swedish conglomerate, set up an American company, Inc. and approached Racal's Whent in July 1982 about bidding jointly for the UK's second cellular radio licence. The two struck a deal giving Racal 60% of the new company, Racal-Millicom and Millicom 40%. Due to UK concerns about foreign ownership, the terms were revised, in December 1982, the Racal-Millicom partnership was awarded the second UK mobile phone network license. Final ownership of Racal-Millicom, Ltd was 80% Racal, with Millicom holding 15% plus royalties and venture firm Hambros Technology Trust holding 5%.
According to the UK Secretary of State for Industry, "the bid submitted by Racal-Millicom Ltd… provided the best prospect for early national coverage by cellular radio."Vodafone was launched on 1 January 1985 under the new name, Racal-Vodafone Ltd, with its first office based in the Courtyard in Newbury and shortly thereafter Racal Strategic Radio was renamed Racal Telecommunications Group Limited. On 29 December 1986, Racal Electronics issued shares to the minority shareholders of Vodafone worth GB£110 million, Vodafone became a owned brand of Racal. On 26 October 1988, Racal Telecom, majority held by Racal Electronics, went public on the London Stock Exchange with 20% of its stock floated; the successful flotation led to a situation where Racal's stake in Racal Telecom was valued more than the whole of Racal Electronics. Under stock market pressure to realise full value for shareholders, Racal demerged Racal Telecom in 1991. On 16 September 1991, Racal Telecom was demerged from Racal Electronics as Vodafone Group, with Gerry Whent as its CEO.
In July 1996, Vodafone acquired the two-thirds of Talkland it did not own for £30.6 million. On 19 November 1996, in a defensive move, Vodafone purchased Peoples Phone for £77 million, a 181 store chain whose customers were overwhelmingly using Vodafone's network. In a similar move the company acquired the 80% of Astec Communications that it did not own, a service provider with 21 stores. In January 1997, Gerald Whent retired and Christopher Gent took over as the CEO; the same year, Vodafone introduced its Speechmark logo, composed of a quotation mark in a circle, with the O's in the Vodafone logotype representing opening and closing quotation marks and suggesting conversation. On 29 June 1999, Vodafone completed its purchase of AirTouch Communications, Inc. and changed its name to Vodafone Airtouch plc. The merged company commenced trading on 30 June 1999; the acquisition gave Vodafone owner of the largest German mobile network. To gain anti-trust approval for the merger, Vodafone sold its 17.2% stake in Mannesmann's German competitor, E-Plus Mobilfunk.
On 21 September 1999, Vodafone agreed to merge its US wireless assets with those of Bell Atlantic Corp to form Verizon Wireless. The merger was completed on 4 April 2000, just a few months prior to Bell Atlantic's merger with GTE to form Verizon Communications, Inc. In November 1999, Vodafone made an unsolicited bid for Mannesmann, rejected. Vodafone's interest in Mannesmann had been increased by the latter purchase of Orange, the UK mobile operator. Chris Gent would say Mannesmann's move into the UK broke a "gentleman's agreement" not to compete in each other's home territory; the hostile takeover provoked strong protest in Germany, a "titanic struggle" which saw Mannesmann resist Vodafone's efforts. However, on 3 February 2000, the Mannesmann board agreed to an increased offer of £112 billion the largest corporate merger ever; the EU approved the merger in April 2000 when Vodafone agreed to divest the'Orange' brand, acquired in May 2000 by France Télécom. On 28 July 2000, the Company reverted to Vodafone Group plc..
On 17 December 2001, Vodafone introduced the concept of "Partner Networks", by signing TDC Mobil of Denmark. The new concept involved the introduction of Vodafone
Smartwatch
A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a wristwatch. While early models could perform basic tasks, such as calculations, digital time telling and game-playing, 2010s smartwatches have more general functionality closer to smartphones, including mobile apps, a mobile operating system and WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity; some smartwatches function as portable media players, with FM radio and playback of digital audio and video files via a Bluetooth headset. Some models, called'watch phones', have mobile cellular functionality like making calls. While internal hardware varies, most have an electronic visual display, either backlit LCD or OLED; some use electronic paper, to consume less power. They are powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Peripheral devices may include digital cameras, accelerometers, heart rate monitors, barometers, compasses, GPS receivers, tiny speakers, microSD cards, which are recognized as storage devices by many other kinds of computers. Software may include digital maps and personal organizers and various kinds of watch faces.
The watch may communicate with external devices such as sensors, wireless headsets, or a heads-up display. Like other computers, a smartwatch may collect information from internal or external sensors and it may control, or retrieve data from, other instruments or computers, it may support wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS. For many purposes, a "watch computer" serves as a front end for a remote system such as a smartphone, communicating with the smartphone using various wireless technologies. Smartwatches are advancing their design, battery capacity, health-related applications; the first digital watch, which debuted in 1972, was the Pulsar manufactured by Hamilton Watch Company. "Pulsar" became a brand name which would be acquired by Seiko in 1978. In 1982, a Pulsar watch was released which could store 24 digits, making it most the first watch with user-programmable memory, or "memorybank" watch. With the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s, Seiko began to develop computers in the form of watches.
The Data 2000 watch came with an external keyboard for data-entry. Data was synced from the keyboard to the watch via electro-magnetic coupling; the name comes from its ability to store 2000 characters. The D409 featured a dot matrix display, its memory was tiny, at only 112 digits. It was released in 1984, in gold and black; these models were followed by many others by Seiko during the 1980s, most notably the "RC Series": During the 1980s, Casio began to market a successful line of "computer watches", in addition to its calculator watches. Most notable was the Casio data bank series. Novelty "game watches", such as the Nelsonic game watches, were produced by Casio and other companies; the RC-1000 Wrist Terminal was the first Seiko model to interface with a computer, was released in 1984. It was powered by a computer on a chip, it was compatible with most of the popular PCs of that time, including Apple II, II+ and IIe, the Commodore 64, IBM PC, NEC 8201, Tandy Color Computer, Model 1000, 1200, 2000 and TRS-80 Model I, III, 4 and 4p.
The RC-20 Wrist Computer was released in 1985, under the joint brand name "Seiko Epson". It had a SMC84C00 8-bit Z-80 microprocessor, it had applications for scheduling and world time and a four-function calculator app. The dot-matrix LCD displayed 42×32 pixels, more was touch-sensitive. Like the RC-1000, it could be connected to a personal computer, in this case through a proprietary cable, it was notable in that it could be programmed, although its small display and limited storage limited application development. The RC-4000 PC Data graph released in 1985, was dubbed the "world's smallest computer terminal", it had 2 KB of storage. The RC-4500 known as the Wrist Mac, had the same features as the RC-4000, but came in a variety of bright, flashy colors; the Timex Datalink wristwatch, was introduced in 1994. The early Timex Datalink Smartwatches realized a wireless data transfer mode to communicate with a PC. Appointments and contacts created with Microsoft Schedule+, the predecessor of MS Outlook, could be transmitted to the watch via a screen blinking light protocol.
In 1998, Steve Mann invented and built the world's first Linux wristwatch, which he presented at IEEE ISSCC2000 on 7 February 2000, where he was named "the father of wearable computing". See Linux Journal, where Mann's Linux wristwatch appeared on the cover and was the feature article of LJ Issue 75. Seiko launched the Ruputer in Japan - a wristwatch computer with a 3.6 MHz processor. It was not successful, since instead of a touchscreen it used a joystick-like device to input characters, the small screen with a resolution at 102x64 in 4 greyscales made it hard to read large amounts of text. Outside of Japan, this watch was distributed as the Matsucom onHand PC. Despite the rather low demand, the Matsucom onHand PC was distributed until 2006, making it a smartwatch with a rather long life cycle. Ruputer and onHand PC applications are 100% compatible; this watch is sometimes considered the first smartwatch since it was the first watch to offer graphics display and many 3rd party applications. In 1999, Samsung launched t
