Android Wireless Application Development

The start-to-finish guide to Android application development: massively updated for the newest SDKs and developer techniques!

This book delivers all the up-to-date information, tested code, and best practices you need to create and market successful mobile apps with the latest versions of Android. Drawing on their extensive experience with mobile and wireless development, Lauren Darcey and Shane Conder cover every step: concept, design, coding, testing, packaging, and delivery. The authors introduce the Android platform, explain the principles of effective Android application design, and present today’s best practices for crafting effective user interfaces. Next, they offer detailed coverage of each key Android API, including data storage, networking, telephony, location-based services, multimedia, 3D graphics, and hardware.

Every chapter of this edition has been updated for the newest Android SDKs, tools, utilities, and hardware. All sample code has been overhauled and tested on leading devices from multiple companies, including HTC, Motorola, and ARCHOS. Many new examples have been added, including complete new applications. This new edition also adds

• Nine new chapters covering web APIs, the Android NDK, extending application reach, managing users, data synchronization, backups, advanced user input, and more
• Greatly expanded coverage of Android manifest files, content providers, app design, and testing
• New coverage of hot topics like Bluetooth, gestures, voice recognition, App Widgets, live folders, live wallpapers, and global search
• Updated 3D graphics programming coverage reflecting OpenGL ES 2.0
• An all-new chapter on tackling cross-device compatibility issues, from designing for the smallest phones to the big new tablets hitting the market
• Even more tips and tricks to help you design, develop, and test applications for different devices
• A new appendix full of Eclipse tips and tricks

This book is an indispensable resource for every member of the Android development team: software developers with all levels of mobile experience, team leaders and project managers, testers and QA specialists, software architects, and even marketers.

Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies, including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre,BREW, and J2ME and consulting services.With more than two decades of experience in professional software production, Lauren is a recognized authority in application architecture and the development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She spends her copious free time traveling the world with her geeky mobile-minded husband and is an avid nature photographer. Her work has been published in books and newspapers around the world. In South Africa, she dove with 4-meter-long great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated bull elephant. She’s been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine with two hungry lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup d’état in Thailand, geocached her way through the Swiss Alps, drank her way through the beer halls of Germany, slept in the crumbling castles of Europe, and gotten her tongue stuck to an iceberg in Iceland (while being watched by a herd of suspicious wild reindeer).

Shane Conder has extensive development experience and has focused his attention on mobile and embedded development for the past decade. He has designed and developed many commercial applications for Android, iPhone,BREW, Blackberry, J2ME, Palm, and Windows Mobile―some of which have been installed on millions of phones worldwide. Shane has written extensively about the mobile industry and evaluated mobile development platforms on his tech blogs and is well known within the blogosphere. Shane received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California.

A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest phone, laptop, or other mobile device.He can often be found fiddling with the latest technologies, such as cloud services and mobile platforms, and other exciting, state-of-the-art technologies that activate the creative part of his brain. He also enjoys traveling the world with his geeky wife, even if she did make him dive with 4-meter-long great white sharks and almost get eaten by a lion in Kenya. He admits that he has to take at least two phones with him when backpacking―even though there is no coverage―that he snickered and whipped out his Android phone to take a picture when Laurie got her tongue stuck to that iceberg in Iceland, and that he is catching on that he should be writing his own bio.