Android Studio is a new IDE for the Android operating system. Launched by Google, it offers new tools for developing apps and is a good alternative to Eclipse, currently the most popular IDE.
When you create a new project on Android Studio, the project's structure will appear with almost all the files in one SRC directory. This is a change that's been made to a generating system based on Gradle that provides greater flexibility while you're building. In addition, thanks to its integrated emulation system, Android Studio lets you view changes made to your app in real time so you can simultaneously see how everything is displayed on different Android devices according to different configurations and resolutions.
Among the many features offered by Android Studio are code-packing and tagging tools to help you organize yourself when implementing huge quantities of code, as well as a drag-and-drop system to move components around on the user interface. This new IDE also has Google Cloud Messaging, a feature to send data from the server to Android via the cloud so you can, for instance, send Push notifications to your apps. Android Studio can also help you track app development, giving you a more visual way to program and control the flow of the app.
What does Android Studio offer?
- A clear and robust development environment.
- Easy testing of functionality on different types of devices.
- Assistants and templates for commonly used programming elements on Android.
- A comprehensive editor with many extra tools to facilitate app development.

Google offers this official Android app development kit for free, it includes a series of drivers, tools and different resources needed to develop apps for the Android mobile operating system, or to run certain desktop apps. Even though this SDK can also be obtained in the Developer Tools pack, where the IDE Eclipse is also included, it can also be downloaded independently.
Android SDK includes several tools to help you take your first steps programing for this platform, including API's brought to you by Google, both for control of the device's features and for integration of all services, apart from a debugger, an emulator for you to test the apps on your PC, and a huge amount of information for you to use when learning to program on Android using Java.
Android is a Linux-based kernel operating system that uses a virtual machine to run the apps, and offers support for all the usual features on modern devices, such as 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, touch screens, among others which are all now commonplace on any smartphone or tablet.