Preface

When we set out to write the first version of this book, many friends and family wondered just what this Android thing was all about. Now, two years after the publication of the first edition, Android is nearly a household term.

The first edition of the book, Unlocking Android, enjoyed enough success that we were privileged to have the opportunity to write this second edition, renamed as Android in Action. The first thirteen chapters of the book have been refreshed and/or rewritten to bring the content up to date with Android 2.2+. Six chapters were added, bringing in more topics of interest that stray from the simplistic but are still within the realm of instructional and informational. The new content extends beyond the basics of Android development, including some topics that I’ve envisioned for a long time but lacked the proper platform to bring them to fruition. We could have written many more chapters, but we had to draw the line somewhere!

The second edition of this book was written by Frank Ableson, Robi Sen, and Chris King. Chris updated chapters 4, 5, 7, and 11. Some excellent content originally written by Charlie Collins remains in this second edition. Early on in the project Chris and I were discussing the need to bring social networking into the book. Chris examined the available social networks and came back with a clever mechanism to integrate the Android contacts database with the popular business networking service LinkedIn. His work is shown in chapter 15, “Integration.” The application from chapter 15 is available as a free download in the Android Market.

Robi updated his chapters on notifications, graphics, and media, while I focused on some new content areas of interest, including Bluetooth communications, sensors, localization, AppWidgets, native development in C, and web development for Android.

In addition to the LinkedIn application from chapter 15, two more applications from this book are available in the Market as free downloads. The first is SenseBot—an application that allows you to drive a LEGO Mindstorms-powered robot by tilting your phone. The application demonstrates both the sensor subsystem of Android, as well as communicating with Bluetooth. The other application available in the Market is called FindEdges. FindEdges demonstrates the Android Native Development Kit as it exercises an image processing algorithm written in the C language.

All in all, writing a book for Android is both exciting and challenging. Android continues to mature and promises to be a major player for years to come. Many thanks are owed to readers of the first edition, for without you, there wouldn’t be a second edition!

FRANK ABLESON