Best Android Programming Books

A comprehensive reference and practice book for Android mobile application development. Professional Android Application Development directly starts real hands-on compelling coding examples after a brief introduction to Android system, application structure, life cycle. Not only essentials, but also advanced topics like GPS usage, accelerometers and background services are also presented in detail with lots of examples. The author's approach to start with simple and extend it to complex, innovative Android applications succeeds. Developing your own Interface takes a lot of pages. The vital factor for the success of any mobile application, data handling with databases are in detail given. Location & map based application development, thread usage, notifications, SMS, telephony APIs, network & Internet programming, Media programming, camera, 2D & 3D graphics development methods, mobile security and hardware considerations are other topics discussed throughout the book.

Each day, we meet with new smartphones which take their power from Android platform. This naturally results in a huge application demand and opens success opportunities for Android programmers. The book is suitable for anyone who wants to start their Android programming career using latest Android SDK.

This is one of the latest Google Android SDK programming books in the market. I especially enjoyed pragmatic mobile software development approach which accelerates learning, development time and quality. I should note that this is not essentially a beginner Android programming book. You should have a nice understanding of Java with OOP knowledge on class, inheritance topics. The authors deeply investigate Cupcake branch, Input method framework, 3D development, voice recognition, OpenGL, media framework and APIs, Wi-Fi APIs, extending APIs for several applications like Google Docs, Chrome browser etc. The authors are apperantly high level senior software developers with years of experience in IT sector.

Suggested for experienced programmers who don't want to lose much digging time with official Google Android references and start developing complex solutions fast-forward.

Aiming Android programming novices to start developing useful mobile applications, Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform book starts with famous Hello, World sample briefly. Later, in a very short time you will be able to create a sudoku application with sounds, nice graphics and interface; a spinning cube example using 3D OpenGL. It is a more refined and shorter book with simpler examples than Wrox Professional Android Development book which I reviewed at the beginning of this article. A nice introduction to SqLite and databases are well appreciated. Note that you don't even require an Android powered smartphone to start learning Android programming. All you need is latest Android SDK and virtual emulator which are freely available on Internet. I liked the step by step tutorial which shows reader how to publish final application to Android Market.

This book was revised frequently to reflect latest SDK changes. Current issue deals with Android 1.5 Cupcake and Android 1.6 Donut versions. Check Amazon for the latest release information.

Here are two additional volumes which you can consider buying. These books are also successful providing useful information on key elements of Android mobile development.

Essentials of Java, Data, Storage, Networking, LBS (Local Based Services), 3D, Multimedia APIs, Notifications, Interface design, Making money with Android Market etc.