Product Description

A hands–on guide to building mobile applications, Professional Android Application Development features concise and compelling examples that show you how to quickly construct real–world mobile applications for Android phones. Fully up–to–date for version 1.0 of the Android software development kit, it covers all the essential features, and explores the advanced capabilities of Android (including GPS, accelerometers, and background Services) to help you construct increasingly complex, useful, and innovative mobile applications for Android phones.

What this book includes

• An introduction to mobile development, Android, and how to get started.
• An in–depth look at Android applications and their life cycle, the application manifest, Intents, and using external resources.
• Details for creating complex and compelling user interfaces by using, extending, and creating your own layouts and Views and using Menus.
• A detailed look at data storage, retrieval, and sharing using preferences, files, databases, and Content Providers.
• Instructions for making the most of mobile portability by creating rich map–based applications as well as using location–based services and the geocoder.
• A look at the power of background Services, using threads, and a detailed look at Notifications.
• Coverage of Android′s communication abilities including SMS, the telephony APIs, network management, and a guide to using Internet resources
• Details for using Android hardware, including media recording and playback, using the camera, accelerometers, and compass sensors.
• Advanced development topics including security, IPC, advanced 2D / 3D graphics techniques, and user–hardware interaction.

Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you′re an experienced mobile developer or making your first foray, via Android, into writing mobile applications. It will give the grounding and knowledge you need to write applications using the current SDK, along with the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200620 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Author
A hands-on guide to building mobile applications, Professional Android Application Development features concise and compelling examples that show you how to quickly construct real-world mobile applications for Android phones. Fully up-to-date for version 1.0 of the Android software development kit, it covers all the essential features, and explores the advanced capabilities of Android (including GPS, accelerometers, and background Services) to help you construct increasingly complex, useful, and innovative mobile applications for Android phones.
What this book includes

* An introduction to mobile development, Android, and how to get started.

* An in-depth look at Android applications and their life cycle, the application manifest, Intents, and using external resources.

* Details for creating complex and compelling user interfaces by using, extending, and creating your own layouts and Views and using Menus.

* A detailed look at data storage, retrieval, and sharing using preferences, files, databases, and Content Providers.

* Instructions for making the most of mobile portability by creating rich map-based applications as well as using location-based services and the geocoder.

* A look at the power of background Services, using threads, and a detailed look at Notifications.

* Coverage of Android's communication abilities including SMS, the telephony APIs, network management, and a guide to using Internet resources

* Details for using Android hardware, including media recording and playback, using the camera, accelerometers, and compass sensors.

* Advanced development topics including security, IPC, advanced 2D / 3D graphics techniques, and user-hardware interaction.

Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you're an experienced mobile developer or making your first foray, via Android, into writing mobile applications. It will give the grounding and knowledge you need to write applications using the current SDK, along with the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements.

From the Back Cover
Professional Android Application Development

Offering an open development environment, Android represents an exciting new opportunity to write innovative applications for mobile devices. This book provides you with a hands–on guide to building these applications using the Android software development kit. It takes you through a series of sample projects, each introducing new features and techniques to get the most out of Android. You′ll learn all about the basic functionality as well as discover how to utilize the advanced features with the help of concise and useful examples.

Beginning with an introduction to the Android software stack, the author examines the philosophy behind creating robust, consistent, and appealing applications for mobile phones. You′ll get the grounding and knowledge that is needed to write customized mobile applications using the current Android 1.0 SDK. Plus, you′ll also gain the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements in order to build the most cutting–edge solutions.

What you will learn from this book

• Best practices for Android mobile development

• An introduction to Activities, Intents, the manifest, and resources

• How to create user interfaces with layouts and custom views

• Techniques to store and share your application data

• Instructions for creating map–based applications, using location–based services including GPS, and geocoding locations

• How to create and use background Services and Notifications

• Working with the accelerometers, compass, and camera hardware

• All about phone and networking hardware such as telephony APIs, SMS, and network management

• Advanced development topics, including security, IPC, and some advanced graphics and user interface techniques

Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you′re an experienced mobile developer or just starting out writing mobile applications.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real–world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author
Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Reto Meier now lives in London.
Reto is an experienced software developer with more than 10 years of experience in GUI application architecture, design, and development. He’s worked in various industries, including offshore oil and gas, before moving to London and into fi nance.
Always interested in emerging technologies, Reto has been involved in Android since the initial release in 2007. In his spare time, he tinkers with a wide range of development platforms including WPF and Google’s plethora of developer tools.

Customer Reviews

Best so far
Had to write a review about this as the only other comment written about this book is very misleading.
This is the best Android book released so far.
Thats not to say its a great book but all the others are rubbish in comparison.
Yes it is a bit out of date but when your writing books about a rapidly moving target it gets out of date very quickly. At least it is based on 1.0, most of the others don't even cover 1.0

Overall a good book
I bought this book when it first came out and never touched it till a few weeks ago. Now android is on 1.5 and this book is based on 1... but all the code still works and you can follow the examples fine... you are not missing out on much with the 1.5 release.

There are 3 main examples which you build upon in this book:

The first is a notepad application which starts you out on what views are and how to create menu items. You then add providers to it and write and read everything from databases.

The second is a WhereAmI application which you build from scratch which gives you your current location based on available resources sucha as whether GPS is enabled. This links google maps to your application where you plot your current location on.

The final example is a Volcano application which introduces a more complex settings menu along with plotting volcanoes locations using google maps. It introduces background processing, notifications and connecting to a website to grab rss data to display.

The reason i gave the book 3 stars and not higher is because it is sometimes unclear as to where it wants you to put code and occasionally has code which will not work... and you have to go looking on the internet to find the solution. This only happened a few times to me while reading the book, but was annoying when it did as the books website did not have the solution in its errata... but i found the solutions on the books website forum.

I think it covers an awful lot and explains it well... it could be better however and clearer. If you ever need more information the author refers you to the android help pages, as otherwise the book would be twice as thick,giving you the option to go away and read more if required. Such as with the maps API key, you need to go and find out how to generate your key... which wasnt too hard.

I think this is one of the best android books out there, as have looked through a few others and they were awful. This and Hello Android book in my opinion are the 2 to by if you want to get into writing android applications... and go check out the official developer website as that is very detailed and good.

A good introduction
A good introduction to development of Android apps. It's not in-depth, so I've had to go elsewhere when I've wanted to do something more advanced with any particular feature it describes, but it does cover quite a wide selection of the different topics/APIs. I've been using this more than the other book I bought - Android A programmer's guide (DiMarzio).