ubertaoist said
At first glance this is a really good book on Android programming. The first two chapters set you up with the most basic knowledge you will need to get ready to program. The following 4 or 5 chapters are wholly frustrating. These chapters deal with making a Sudoku game. The author leaves many things unsaid. He will purposefully have you build your program so that it will have errors. Once to show your your mistake, once he just leaves an error in there for like 9 pages. The author will just throw random components out there that have nothing to add to what you are currently doing. At one point you are creating an "About" activity and the author randomly starts talking about themes. Maybe we should finish the program before we make it look pretty? Maybe we should finish our current concept before starting another one?
Aside from the beginning project, the rest of this book is quite good. Many topics are covered, including making widgets, 2D programming, 3D programming, live wallpapers, using SQL, publishing your apps and games, and more.
If you are a beginner to Java, get an intro to Java book first/too, the author assumes fairly competent knowledge of Java syntax, keywords, and the like. All and all not the worst book, but not the greatest. I, personally, would not recommend this book.
Juan J. Mendez said
I think this book would have made it better if they wouldn't go into the sudoku example which was going back and forth creating an application whose logic was to me obscure. i think this book is good to get an idea about android applications and move to another book. that was my case. I found other examples such as sound, video and storing video much more practical, but the chapters covering the sudoku game made it really a lot to read and trying to see where was the game going and being clear what i needed to know in order to do android apps. Look into the book Professional Android 2, that book is a lot thicker but gives a lot more juice to how to make android apps.
Daniel McKinnon said
Pragmatic makes some computing books, and 'Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform' is more of the same goodness that is to be expected from this line. I really like this book a lot. The writing is very easy to follow and the book hits the sweet spot of 250-300 pages that should be the goal for nearly any book that is written. Not too long, not to short, but juuust right. 14 chapters of content are what is in store for the reader, covering the basics to UI to multimedia to database work to... lets just say there is a lot of good stuff here!!
There aren't a lot of books about Android on the market, so as a new developer you owe it to yourself to read them all, and there is a reason this is now in its 3rd Edition. I wish the book had some color as this is a personal sticking point for me with ALL books, but I rarely fault the publishers and I won't fault them here.
Great book for all!!
***** RECOMMENDED
TLuke said
I am in Chapter 3 of this book and I have learned a lot so far. I have tried a few other books, but this book (third edition) has been the best so far.
Besides having the code available on a website, the author explains concepts with concrete examples. Other books cover these same topics, but Hello, Android has step-by-step examples, building an application from the start.
Chris Chenoweth said
I will preface my review by saying I am a C# developer used to Visual Studio (up to version 2010). I love the Visual Studio environment. Eclipse was a little bit of a learning curve for me. But, I got by just fine.
Here is a book that took me about 3 days to read cover to cover. I've been programming for many years and this book was perfect for me. High level overviews are the best way to figure out how things work. He even provides links for you to find more information for things that truly interest you.
I don't agree with some of other reviews. I really didn't have any issues implementing the code in the examples.
My only complaint would be in the OpenGL section. I wish there was more comments in the code as to what each line was doing. I looked each up myself easily though.
Get the PDF, Mobi, and epub. Amazon doesn't appear to offer it on their site. So, I had to go to the publishers site (The offer all three for a lower price than buying the hard copy). That could change. I didn't really see a reason for the actual print version since I have a Kindle DX.
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