I am looking into mobile app development, and I had some questions about the android platform.
Does the android platform use a central settings and preferences page (much like the gears icon on an iOS device)?
I've been reading about services. Are these what I would use if I wanted to develop an application that doesn't have a UI (think something like the drop box client)?
In my reading about services I read that the android OS will kill your service when it thinks that it needs to reclaim resources. Is there a way to ensure a service wouldn't be killed?
How much control would I as a developer have over the physical hardware? Say if I wanted to make an app to block distractions, and to do this I would need to control the networking interfaces beyond purposely misconfiguring these interfaces to block their connection? Can I programmatically turn off these interfaces?