Professional Android Development is a developer's guide to building mobile applications using the Android SDK. This hands-on approach takes readers through a series of projects, each introducing a new Android platform feature and highlighting the techniques and best practices to get the most out of Android. Providing concise and compelling examples, Professional Android Development shows how to quickly construct real-world mobile applications for Android phones. While most readers will have experience using mobile phones and developing software, many will not have written applications specifically for mobiles. Professional Android Development begins by offering an introduction to the Android software stack and examining the philosophy behind creating robust, consistent, and appealing applications for mobile phones. From this common base readers progress to increasingly complex examples that illustrate the features available for constructing their mobile phone projects. Readers create full Android applications in a series of exercises designed to introduce new concepts, APIs, and Android functionality. The exercises begin as simple tasks that introduce readers to the anatomy, lifecycle, and UI metaphor of an Android application. Each step adds a particular piece of functionality to construct increasingly feature rich Android applications. Readers can use the exercises and the completed projects as a basis for developing their own Android applications. The projects are written in Java using Eclipse with the Android plugin. While Android uses Java syntax, the power of the platform lies in the Android APIs. Many readers will already be familiar with Java and it's easy to learn, so readers with different development backgrounds should find the transition straightforward. Readers more comfortable with an alternative Java development environment should also find it easy to use their preferred tools.

Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Reto Meier now lives in London.
Reto is an experienced software developer with more than 10 years of experience in GUI application architecture, design, and development. He’s worked in various industries, including offshore oil and gas, before moving to London and into fi nance.
Always interested in emerging technologies, Reto has been involved in Android since the initial release in 2007. In his spare time, he tinkers with a wide range of development platforms including WPF and Google’s plethora of developer tools.