Sam said
Finally, I finished reading this book 24 hr is a misnomer, if you are thinking to finish the book in a day (it took me 13 days 2 hr a day cover to cover). One of the nice thing is the book is in Full Colour version these include screenshots, code and references to Eclipse (especially helpful if you are new with eclipse development). The book is easy to read, font and spacing were pleasing.
I should confess this is a beginner's book. You need some basic understanding of java and its concepts. The game the author picked was too basic for me, I wish I would have stated with this book months ago as it covers androids basic concepts and the first 6 chapters builds up the ground work for development on how to use eclipse and introduction to device debugging and logging( Eclipse DDMS, Android LogCat Logging).
A very good early introduction to debugging in chapter 2 right place before you get your hands dirty with coding, which i haven't seen any other books covering in that details. The author also mentions the reason they selected to use a particular android API or functionality at places and provide links for further reading.
There are also examples and exercises and although they are simple and primitive they give you the idea how to implement or use specific functionality and the solution for exercises are missing (it would have been helpful if there was a downloadable version on the website).Tips at some places are very useful and practical, some places it was an eye opener for an advance developer like me.
You will find this book useful and I'm sure it can be used as manual (not for expert android developer).
GivenToFly17 said
This is the worst programming book I've ever read. It assumes you fully understand the concepts without ever showing you code first, then dumps you right into writing a quiz program and very quickly gets over complicated without explaining or giving good examples. The downloadable code doesn't even follow the book!!! More often than not, there is code that was never even brought up in the book. This leads to constant errors in the compiler and head scratching and frustration.
There are also lots of typo's too. It seems this book was rushed out onto the market with very little proofreading, or common sense editing.
My advice to anyone looking to learn android is to stay away from this book. After checking out some others, this is definatly the worst one. I wish I never bought it.
Wee Kah Huat said
It is too basic and it does not cover the content in depth. If you are a developer, there are better books available. This book focus on what is android rather than on how to develop the application for Android.
Eye Rha said
The book's topic is complex and one that is changing rapidly. Other reviews stated that this book is not for beginners and I agree. It would help for the reader to be familiar with the Eclipse IDE and with Java before tacking this book.
There book includes an appendix on downloading and installing the tools needed. I found that the instructions didn't exactly follow my experience installing on an Ubuntu Linux system, but with some help from Google and some creative thinking, I was able to get the tools installed and working. The hurdles that I ran into were more due to the lack of a simple one-button install than of this book. It would have been nice if the authors (or someone else) created a single simple tool to inspect your system and download and install the necessary components.
Back to the book ...as with the tool installation, I ran into problems due to the system not behaving exactly the way the book said it would. It took me a while, due to my linear approach to reading books, to realize that if something didn't work I needed to keep reading and look for the next "By the way" gray box. These sections had hints for cases where your system didn't match the instructions.
One big hint that should have been in the beginning of the book, is that Eclipse, Java, and Android are all evolving technologies. You may encounter something that doesn't work or an unexpected error message. In these cases, enter the error message or the problem description into Google's search box to find solutions. I know this is obvious, but the book makes Android seem cookie-cutter-simple and it isn't in reality.
The book has examples of a lot of Android app capabilities and is a good book to have in one's Android library. But I wouldn't make it my first Android book.
The publisher provides a website to download 15 zip files of sample code. Having to download 15 separate files instead of one single archive file is consistent with some of the roughness of the book itself.
J. Pelgrim said
The first thing that hits you when you flip through the pages of this book is the color. The example screens, diagrams and tables really stand out. It's a delight to read a full color book and I'm thinking, why have I never come across more full color IT books?
The target audience are developers with a Java programming background who want to start Android development. And the book fulfills this promise very well.
The first couple of chapters are introductory, but aren't a drag to read (although the concepts of Activities, Intents and the manifest file are better explained in a book like "Hello, Android!" from the Pragmatic Programmers)
A second thing which really stuck out and is well worth mentioning are the "Did you know", "Watch out!" and "By the way" text boxes which really showed the authors have real programming experience with Android. Those little text boxes sometimes really contained little gems of information. These alone are worth reading every page of this book since you don't want to miss out on these.
The chapters are called "Hour 1..." and "Hour 2..." and are really targeted to be digested in an hour, max. I sometimes simply read a chapter in half an hour, without working out the examples in the development environment. I know, maybe not the way to go to really learn programming Android very well, but considering the time (we all have so little of) just reading a quick chapter was fulfilling for me anyway ;-)
Every chapter concludes with a Q&A section which was a bit tedious. The questions were very simple and the answers were right below the questions, so I skipped those sections further down the book. Apart from the Q&A section each chapter also included some exercises, which really are a challenge, because no 'answer' is given there. Just a task. I liked those!
A lot of Android books (or programming books in general) use a sample application which is enhanced throughout the whole book. This book is no different. However, where other books might focus on forms and list this book's example is a nice trivia game, which makes use of the camera, the network, social features and many other cool Android framework features.
The way the example program is set up and worked out is really the way you (or I in this case) would start fiddling around with Android. At some point it states: "You can copy the QuizSplashActivity five more times..." A very pragmatic approach, and again something programmers do daily. Maybe not the most elegant suggestion, but if you want to achieve something fast (learning Android) that's just the way I like.
Before you dive into a new chapter, a concept or screen layout a nice diagram is often presented first, which really helps in getting your brain in design / conceptual 'mode' (so to speak).
The majority of the Android concepts are covered really well. Shared preferences, context- and normal menus, dialogs, views, view switchers, image media, location based services, progress bars, communicating with a network server, creating home screen app widgets, and many more. Also 'development' activities like testing and developing for different devices and 'deployment' activities like placing your app in the Android market are present in the book.
The majority of the chapters have sample code, which you can download from a website. The examples all worked in my case. No problems there.
The author's are active bloggers on mobile application development and Android development in particular. If you don't buy the book you should definitely check out their blog (at [...]) and the mobile tuts website ([...]), with many of their contributions.
Advanced topics like OpenGL 2D/3D, the SQLite database, content providers and the various sensors, etc. are each described in half to a full page of text, but not more. I would have wanted to see a chapter on SQLite database and one on content providers though, since these are very common in Android apps, even for beginners.
Conclusion: I really liked the full color pages, the text boxes with invaluable information from real programmers and the digestibility of the chapters a real plus. Maybe some advanced features (like SQLite databases and content providers) could have been described in their own chapter, but then again, the target audience is the beginning Android developer. The book is very complete in the sense that it describes the whole process of setting up your dev environment, programming your app, testing it and deploying it on the Android market. I would really recommend this book for beginning Android developers. If you already read one or two Android books and consider yourself a mid-level to seasoned Android programmer don't buy the book. Maybe skim the pages and read the "Watch out!", "By the way" and "Did you know" text boxes ;-)
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