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

The book first covers the big picture so the reader can get comfortable with the Android approach to the mobile applications. Then the reader learns to apply Android by following the many practical examples. The book concludes with two deep and hands-on examples.

Unlocking Android addresses the Android application framework, its graphical capabilities and media support, data storage, communications capabilities, phone interactions, and notifications.

Unlocking Android covers Android SDK 1.x

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

Must Have for Android Developers - 2009-06-10
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Not all its hyped up to be - 2009-07-08
Reviewer Rating:
Review omitted for brevity... Thats how I feel about the code examples. Whatever happened to the good ol' days when code examples were long but complete. If someone is a beginner, they don't know how to complete the code that the authors decided to leave out.

If you use this book as a supplement to the developer.android.com documentation, you will be better off than depending on this book as a source.

Great read - 2009-11-09
Reviewer Rating:
As a beginner with Android, this book was extremely helpful in getting me up to speed quickly. I would ( and have ) recommend this book to any level android practitioner.

Lots of books, but this ones works for me. - 2009-08-10
Reviewer Rating:
Of the many Android developer books, this one seems to work best for me.
Not exactly a "how to", not exactly a "reference", but a mixture that gives the intermediate programmer a boast without overlooking the basics for the beginner.

I would definitely recommend this book to my programmer friends.

Very Good Introduction and Thorough Overview of Android - 2009-07-10
Reviewer Rating:
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! ;-).

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