About this Book

From the Preface

Android is 'the open source revolution' applied to cellular telephony and mobile computing. At least, part of the revolution. There have been many other attempts to provide open source cell phones, most of them largely defunct, ranging from the Openmoko Neo FreeRunner to QT Embedded, Moblin, LiMo, Debian Mobile, Maemo, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Mobile to the open sourced Symbian OS and the now-defunct HP WebOS. And let’s not forget the established closed source stalwart, Apple’s iOS, and the two minor players (by market share), Microsoft’s Windows Phone, and the now-abandoned BlackBerry OS 10.

Amongst all these offerings, two stand out as major players. Android is definitely here to stay! Due to its open source licensing, Android is used on many economy-model phones around the world, and indeed, Android has been estimated to be on as many as 90% of the world’s smartphones. This book is here to help the Android developer community share the knowledge that will help make better apps. Those who contribute knowledge here are helping to make Android development easier for those who come after.

Who This Book Is By

This book was co-written by several dozen Android developers from the Android community at large. Development occurred in the open, on the Android Cookbook website, which I built (using Java, of course) to allow people to contribute, view, review, and comment on the recipes that would make up this book. A complete list can be found in 'Acknowledgments'. I am deeply grateful to all the contributors, who have helped move this book from a dream to the reality that you have in your hands (or onscreen if you are reading the ebook format). Thank you all!

Who This Book Is For

This book focuses on building Android applications using Java, the native language of Android applications. It is of course possible to package up a web application as a mobile app (see Recipe 19.10), but it will be difficult to get the all-important 100%-correct user experience with all the current features of Android that way.

So. Java. We assume you know the basics of the Java language. If not, see Recipe 1.4. We also assume you know the basics of the Java Standard Edition API (since this forms the basis of Android’s runtime libraries) as well as the basics of Android. The terms Activity, Intent, Service, and content provider, while not necessarily being what you dream about at night, should at least be familiar to you. But if not, we’ve got you covered: see Recipe 1.2.

This book differs from the Samples associated with the Android SDK in that it tries to focus more on how a given piece of technology works, rather than giving you (as many of the Samples do) a complete, working example that has both been simplified (to use very simple data) and complicated by adding in several 'neat' features that are irrelevant to the problem at hand.