Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform

Android is a new software toolkit for mobile phones, created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. In a few years, it's expected to be found inside millions of cell phones and other mobile devices, making Android a major platform for application developers. That could be your own program running on all those devices.

Getting started developing with Android is easy. You don't even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the phone emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, `Hello, Android` will get you creating your first working application: Android's version of `Hello, World.`

From there, you'll build up a more substantial example: an Android Sudoku game. By gradually adding features to the game throughout the course of the book, you'll learn about many aspects of Android programming including user interfaces, multimedia, and the Android life cycle.

If you're a busy developer who'd rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you. To help you find what you need to know fast, each chapter ends with `Fast forward` section. These sections provide guidance for where you should go next when you need to read the book out of order.

User review
Great resource for beginners, with a few caveats
I have virtually no programming experience. Other than a solid beginner's understanding of LAMP (unix, apache, mysql, PHP and scripting stuff in general), I've never done more than fiddle with code. I do have a cursory knowledge of programming concepts and XML, but that's about it. I'm pretty much a curly brace language virgin.

Hello, Android does a solid job of introducing you to the fundamentals of programming for the Android OS -- it gives you a succinct overview of why you need to do 'XYZ' and when to do it. If you're looking for pages and pages of fundamentals and core concepts, you may want to look elsewhere because Hello, Android makes you hit the ground running and helps you immediately apply the quick concepts you just learned. This is excellent for a beginner like me because the results are immediate and gives you a sense of `this isn't so intimidating,,. I can actually do it!`

The one aspect I enjoyed about the book was that it gently gets the absolute beginner up to speed but then does less and less hand-holding as the tutorials moved along; this lets intermediate and advanced programmers move along at a brisk pace, but also forces beginners to think about previous concepts that were taught earlier. Instead of simply copying-and-pasting `recipe` code, it really challenged me to think and absorb what the author was teaching. This was invaluable for me as a beginner that likes to be challenged with more than just a simple 'copy and paste this code from page XX, then hit build and run'.

One intangible you won't find in the book -- the author is very helpful/responsive in the Pragmatic Programmer's forums, as are the other members. Any question I've had were answered (usually) within a day, and many times within an hour. For instance, I was having an issue with running 64-bit version of Java JDK in my Android dev environment. The author (and other members) were very helpful in getting my dev environment up and running. Needless to say, the community that goes along with the book is invaluable.

I've owned dozens of wrox, apress etc books since the 90s, and this is one of the few that I would not hesitate to recommend to both beginners and advanced programmers with no Java or XML dev experience. Get this book! 4.5 stars.

PS -- if you buy the paper version of the book, I'd also highly recommend the e-version. Having a PDF up side-by-side with Eclipse (Android's default IDE) is extremely useful.

User review
Quick delivery! `Hello Android`
Perfect! And quicker than I expected.
I thought it was going to take at least a month and I got it in 17 days. Well done AMAZON.Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform (Pragmatic Programmers)

User review
Learn Android in a Weekend
I've read several books on Android from cover to cover, and skimmed several others, and `Hello, Android` is hands-down the best introduction to Android development.

Here's why I say that --

You really can get through the book in a day or two. The explanations are clear, the topics focus on what's relevant to getting started in Android development, and when you're done you have the skills to dive into the SDK to continue learning.

There is a consistent example project that is developed throughout the book. I found this very helpful, because it showed me how all the different parts fit together. For example, launching activities from an existing activity, using multiple classes in your project, adding preferences, etc.

There are very few (if any) `gotchas` in this book. I followed the examples step by step without any problem. I think some people have used the book's online forum to ask about which packages to import, but when I used Eclipse it was done automatically for me. (By the way, all the files are also online.)

Even after having many months of Android development under my belt, I find that I still refer back to this book from time to time. That's saying something for a book that sets out to be an introduction.

Remember, this book is a great introduction. If you already know Android and are looking for a deep-dive, look elsewhere. But if you are curious about all the excitement around Android and have a few hours to spare, spend them with this book and find out what developing in Android is all about.

User review
Best First Book for Android
The title, `Hello, Android`, is perfect, because this is an introduction to Android. This is not designed as an exhaustive reference, nor should it be. Instead, it is the perfect length for quickly coming up to speed on the basics.

I am an experienced Java developer, and this book helped me learn Android quickly. It does not waste time explaining how to use Java, so if you are an absolute newbie, this might not be for you.

Android is rapidly evolving, and Ed is doing a great job keeping up with changes to Android. You can also get the PDF version, and Pragmatic Bookshelf lets you download beta chapters as they are updated.

User review
Didn't work for me
Update: Changed my rating from 3 to 2 stars. I was going through the location chapter and stopped at this paragraph - `The code for the remaining methods of LocationTest--log( ), dumpProviders(), and dumpLocation( )--is not very interesting, so I won't bore you with it here. You can find it all in the downloadable samples on the book's website.` This book is way to dependent on you going to the website. It presumes an internet connection, which might not be available wherever I might want to read this book (e.g. coffee shops) or might just be down. So I could just be stuck with incomplete code. I had a read through Pro Android and found that book to be excellent, only missing a section on SensorManager unfortunately. I would go with that one over Hello Android. Rest of my unchanged review is here:

I still rate this book with 3 stars despite how irritating I'm finding it. I figure it is irritating because of my learning style. It covers a wide range of topics, so it might still be worth having around.

It started out fine, and was able to breeze through, even though I had some problems with the initial Sudoku problem. Why I find this book so irritating is the order of the code. The author creates classes and methods that will eventually reference other classes and methods while never saying how the components all fit together. In the case of the Sudoku game, the game logic actually comes at the end of the one of the chapters, whereas for me it would make more sense to place this at the beginning of the chapter to get an understanding of how the game works and then build the xml interfaces on top of this as needed, allowing me to understand how all the components work together. It is obvious the author is just giving the code as he created it rather than going through how to create an Android app. This could just be the way I like to learn programming though. In between the code examples there is little in way of explanation either. I skipped ahead to another chapter to get away from the Sudoku example, and found it similar with poor-ordering and limited explanations.

Do visit the website as there is more help and corrections available.