Can you explain the difference between Intent and PendingIntent objects in Android?

Intent is an object that describes an intention to perform a certain action, such as starting an Activity or a service. It contains information about what needs to be done and with what data.

PendingIntent is a wrapper around an Intent that allows another application or the system to perform this Intent on behalf of your application in the future. This is useful, for example, for notifications or AlarmManager, when the action needs to be performed later or in a different context.

Example:

// Create a regular Intent to start an Activity
Intent intent = new Intent(context, MyActivity.class);

// Create a PendingIntent that can be handed over to the system to start the Activity later
PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, intent, 0);

Thus, Intent describes the action, and PendingIntent allows deferring the execution of this action and passing it to another component.