Unlocking Android: A Developer's Guide

by Robi Sen, Charlie Collins, Frank Ableson

Book Overview

Android is a free, open source, Java-based mobile platform developed by Google.Unlocking Android prepares the reader to embrace the Android mobile platformin easy-to-understand language and builds on this foundation withreusable Java code examples. It's ideal for corporate developers and hobbyistswho have an interest, or a mandate, to deliver mobile software.

The book first covers the big picture so the reader can get comfortable with theAndroid...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933988673
• ISBN13: 9781933988672
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Manning Publications
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Nice overview and then deep into the details

Thanks to Szczecin JUG I had opportunity to read 'Unlocking Android - A Developer's Guide'. The title very accurately describes contents of this book. It is truly a developers guide, but also something more. If you are reading this review, you probably already heard about Android? For sure this name does not only denote a bunch of mobile devices, nor it only refers to specific operating system. Android is one of the platforms provided by Google. I found very interesting opinion somewhere on the web. The author concludes that Sun and Google both have three different Java editions. As Sun provides Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Micro Edition, Google offers Cloud Edition (Google App Engine for Java), Web Edition (Google Web Toolkit) and Mobile Edition (Android). Comparing Android to JavaMe is not completely fair. However such comparison shows how many possibilities Android platform provides in the field of development for mobile devices. From this perspective 'Unlocking Android' is not only a developers guide - it is a book about one of important Java editions. Software developed for mobile devices has it's very own specifics and Android platform offers special approach for addressing them. The book describes these topics to great extent also showing interesting comparison with other major mobile platforms. Structure of the book is very convenient for the reader. However be prepared that it is more step-by-step guide then detailed reference of Android APIs. It starts with general concepts, and goes through detailed description of Eclipse based development environment, specifics of UI design, code examples of available APIs, and ends with core topics from the Hacking Android chapter. Each chapter contains a lot of diagrams and screenshots in addition to text and code fragments. The code examples are usually short, and possibly refer only to concept they are supposed to explain. However the sequence of involved machinery is described as deep as it matters - sometimes as deep as the level of Linux operating system internals below Dalvik virtual machine. The whole Unlocking Android, it's structure and contents, is influenced by psychology of the end user of mobile device - the role of user's Intent as declaration of need. APIs which reference the real world have a real world illustrations - e.g. location API has picture of little globe describing latitude and longitude concepts. However I remember such picture from primary school, it seems very useful in this place. The consequence of such amount of information enclosed in one source (almost 400 pages) is that it could be hard to use it as a quick reference. Unfortunately the Android Market and procedures of publishing the application are described very briefly. Android platform is evolving very quickly and I hope that book will be updated to include new features. Who will benefit from reading Unlocking Android? I find it convenient and clear, but novice to software development could b

Very Good Introduction and Thorough Overview of Android

It starts from the top, at the most basic, providing good context by answering questions such as "What is android?" and "Where does it fit in the crowded handset market?" It then covers the anatomy of an Android application, including examples of the most basic through to progressively more complex applications. I think a very good aspect of the book is that it discusses the why of Android, not merely the how of the API. What is an Intent, and why should a user care about it? It tells you; it doesn't just say, "here's the method to call." Similarly with other aspects of the Android platform: if you want to know the whys, they're usually provided. It does also cover the hows thoroughly, starting with setting up a development environment and connecting a debugger to your Android phone, on through to discussing the API in detail. Combined with the sample code available for download online, readers with at least some programming experience and context are given the tools necessary to create real, useable applications, not just toy Hello World apps. In fact, for those of us who feel particularly advanced, there's even a chapter at the end on Hacking Android which covers how to write, compile, and run C code in Android's Linux distribution. This book Unlocked Android; I'd love to see another book going in depth into Hacking Android by writing screaming code in C with direct access to the OS and its underlying components (for instance, is it true that the G1 hardware supports multi-touch but is disabled in software? Hacking Android could show us how to enable it! ;-).

Must Have for Android Developers

This is a must have book for anybody doing Android development. It is definitely targeted at developers who are new to Android -- which describes most Android developers out there given what a new platform it is. However, the level of depth on many topics and the clarity provided behind many key concepts in Android are so well done that this book will benefit anyone working on Android applications. The book is divided into three sections. The first section is called "What is Android? -- The Big Picture." I have to admit, I thought this might be fluff, but it is definitely not. The overview is good, but what the real value is the explanation on getting your development environment setup. This is something that many books fail to mention at all, as it can be a tricky topic to illustrate in a book. It is well done here, and can definitely be a big time save for new developers. More of this kind of "how to" material is also presented in the appendices. The second part is called "Exercising the Android SDK" and is the real meat of the book. It takes a very practical, top-down approach to Android application development. It starts off by explaining UI concepts, then intents and services. It then dives into excellent detail on some of the key aspects of mobile application development: working with data, using the Internet, telephony, notifications, graphics, multimedia, and GPS. I would recommend that you immediately read the chapters 3-6 (UI, intents, services, data management, Internet) as these are really the building blocks of any mobile app that is not a game. The other chapters are great too, but you can probably read them as needed. Maybe you don't need GPS today, but need it three months from now. Just read chapter 11 at that time, and you will have no problem. The chapters are self-contained enough for this, while there is still a nice flow of thought between them as well. The last part of the book is called "Android Applications." It starts off with a very nice example of creating a very "full" application. It really drives in all of the previous material, and is a veritable cookbook of sample code. There are a lot of clever little things you might want to do in your application that you can find an easy to follow sample of in this chapter. I found myself thinking "oh I'm going to rip this off and re-do some part of an existing app." The last chapter is title "Hacking Android" and is all about writing an application in C to run "closer to the metal" on Android. This is probably not that useful to most developers, but I imagine it would be invaluable if you actually did need to do something like this. If nothing else, it is a good read and reveals fascinating aspects of Android's internals. It certainly demonstrates the technical mastery of the authors.

Covered exactly what I wanted

This book allowed me to quickly write my first Android App, but then I used it as my sole guide to getting a more solid understanding of the Android SDK and writing more advanced applications.

A great overview of Android Development

This book covers almost everything you need to get up and running with Android development. While I don't have a basis for comparing it to other Android books, I would say it easily outpaces Googling around for information, and hits most of the high points you need to get started.