Android Phone

[[[Android Application Development]]]

Discription : This practical book provides the concepts and code you need to develop software with Android, the open-source platform for cell phones and mobile devices that's generating enthusiasm across the industry. Based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, Android has the potential to unite a fragmented mobile market. Android Application Development introduces this programming environment, and offers you a complete working example that demonstrates Android architectural features and APIs. With this book, you will:Get a complete introduction to the Android programming environment, architecture, and toolsBuild a modular application, beginning with a core module that serves to launch modules added in subsequent chaptersLearn the concepts and architecture of a specific feature set, including views, maps, location-based services, persistent data storage, 2D and 3D graphics, media services, telephony services, and messagingUse ready-to-run example code that implements each featureDelve into advanced topics, such as security, custom views, performance analysis, and internationalizationThe book is a natural complement to the existing Android documentation provided by Google. Whether you want to develop a commercial application for mobile devices, or just want to create a mobile mashup for personal use, Android Application Development demonstrates how you can design, build, and test applications for the new mobile market.


More review coming soon.

The book itself looked quite promising. However, the information it provides does not deviate very far from the FREE examples that are provided online by the SDK. It does provide some step-by-step annotations to the SDK examples which do help a little. Thankfully it didn't cost too much so it wasn't a complete waste.

See, this book is not spectacular and the assessment of other reviewers confirm this. I found the book only on the "OK" too.

This book is useful to read in conjunction with another book on Android. The advantage of this book is that it gives a good 20,000 ft in the sky overview of the Android system. So while the other book might be plodding through the fundamentals and concepts, this book takes you on a nice journey within Android. Think of it as a novel.

BTW some reviewers have criticized the inordinate time the book spends on explaining the Android Eclipse IDE. I actually think thats a good thing.

Summary: You can't learn Android programming by reading this book. Buy it in case you want an overview of Android.



Reading previous reviews, my first impression is that the T book wouldn "live up to description. On the other hand, I discovered that the book would be a good introduction to the platform and the specific requirements for creating Android applications.

The book starts by explaining how to set up your system for development of Android applications with Eclipse. The information was correct and made no assumptions as to your previous exposure to Eclipse. While most of this information is available from the Android Developers site ([..]), it did go a step further and explain the layout of the Eclipse IDE. This includes portions directly related to Google's plugins.

Unfortunately this good section was followed by downloading and installing the MJAndroid project. The project doesn't work. Like many other reviewers, I was able to download and compile the project, but it wouldn't run in the emulator, without giving fatal errors. Given that this was the example project for the book, this was a major strike against the it.

The book proceeded to explain various portions of the project and how they relate to the topic at hand. While the explanations of each section of an Application was quite good, doing a good job of helping me to understand the subjects, the code in the downloaded application didn't match what was printed in the book. It appeared as if the authors were continuing to make changes to the code (for a new edition maybe) and publishing them. Steps should have been taken to freeze the code and make it clear to readers what should be downloaded. This may be the reason the code wasn't able run on the emulator.

Finally, time is taken to explore how an application is published and what must be done to submit to the App store, the Google APIs, and interacting with databases telephony, and Inter-Process Communication. These were some of the best chapters in the book.

Overall, if a second edition is planned, I would likely read it, especially given the smaller size of the book. The explanations of each section were great. The only overshadowing issue being that the example code didn't match the actual code, and that it didn't run on the emulator. My one request for a future edition would be to add a section on interacting with web services and parsing of XML and JSON. And again, thanks to the authors for not basing the entire book around the creation of a game. My vote, 3 stars. It is worth the read if you have a Safari sub.




Buy here (at discount) Develop Android applications