To effectively understand forensic concepts when dealing with Android, you should have a basic understanding of the Android architecture. Just like a computer, any computing system that interacts with the user and performs complicated tasks requires an operating system to handle the tasks effectively. This operating system (whether it's a desktop operating system or a mobile phone operating system) is responsible for managing the resources of the system, to provide a way for the applications to talk to the hardware or physical components to accomplish certain tasks. Android is currently the most popular mobile operating system designed to power mobile devices. You can find out more about this at https://developer.android.com/about/android.html.

Android, as an open source operating system, releases its code under the Apache License, one of the many open source licenses. Practically, this means anyone (especially device manufacturers) can access it, freely modify it, and use the software according to the requirements of any device. This is one of the primary reasons for its wide acceptance. Notable players that use Android include Samsung, HTC, Sony, and LG.

As with any other platform, Android consists of a stack of layers running one above the other. To understand the Android ecosystem, it's essential to have a basic understanding of what these layers are and what they do.

The following diagram summarizes the various layers involved in the Android software stack:

Each of these layers performs several operations that support specific operating system functions. Each layer provides services to the layers lying on top of it. Let's look at them in a little more detail.