ProAndroid4 is an extensive programming guide to the wildly successful Android mobile/tablet SDK. Read this book to build applications for Android based phones and tablets using the latest Android 4 SDK. In this 4th edition we've refined, rewritten, consolidated, removed and enhanced from Pro Android 3 to create a thorough guide for beginers and professionals. This is a result of over 4 years of research by an experienced group of authors. Over 100 topics covered across 31 chapters and 950 pages.

We have beefed up Android internals by covering threads, processes, asynchronous tasks, configuration changes, long running services, broadcast receivers, and alarm managers. We have a chapter dedicated to advanced debugging of your applications. From the previous edition we have retained the coverage of lot of UI controls. We have integrated the coverage on fragments and fragment diaglogs into one continuous flow of the book.We have significatnly enhanced services, list widgets, animation, contacts and sensor chapters.

This book is full of self contained tutorials in each chapter annotated with expert advice. All projects in the book are available as zip files for downloads.

As the previous edition became too big we have chosen to remove some chapters from the 3rd edition such as OpenGL, Live Folers and the Search API. We have now made these ommited chapters available for free. Click here to find and download these chapters.

Table of Contents

This is an extensive book with 31 chapters and over 950 pages. Here is the table of contents:

What you'll learn:

How to use Android SDK to build Java-based mobile applications?

How to use controls for UI development?

How to populate your application with data from data sources through Content Providers?

How to effectiely use multiple threads, asynchronous tasks, and long running services for better performance?

How to use advanced debugging?

How to respond to device configuration changes such as an orientation change?

How to build multimedia apps using Android's Media APIs? How to use the new Animation API that is introduced and refined through Android 3.0/4.0?

How to use Android's location-based services, network-based services, and security?

How to use new Android 3.0/4.0 features, such as Fragments, Fragment Dialogs, ActionBar, Home Screen List widgets, and Drag and Drop?

In this book we went beyound basics and asked tough questions on every topic and documented the results. See the table of contents for an extensive list of what we cover in the book. Take advantage of the supplimental website (androidbook.com) for current and future research material on the Android SDK

Here is an overview of the authors.

Sayed Hashimi

Sayed Y. Hashimi is a consultant and trainer in Jacksonville, Florida. Sayed has worked for startups and Fortune 100 companies. He has developed large-scale distributed applications with a variety of programming languages and platforms, including C++, Java, and .NET. Sayed has published in major software journals on topics ranging from low-level programming techniques to high-level architecture concepts.

Sayed has moved on to bigger/better opportunities and continuous to be a great resource for us on our 4th edition. Consequently he yielded to us the effort on the 3rd and 4th editions.

Dave MacLean

Dave MacLean is a software engineer and architect currently living and working in Orlando, FL. He has programmed in many languages since 1980 developing systems ranging from robot automation systems to data warehousing, web self-service applications to EDI transaction processors. Dave has worked for Sun Microsystems, IBM, Trimble Navigation, General Motors, Disney, and several small companies. He graduated from the University of Waterloo in Canada with a degree in Systems Design Engineering. You can see his blog posts at http://davemac327.blogspot.com/

Satya Komatineni

Satya komatineni has been programming for too long, frankly, (over 20 years) in the IT and Web space. He has worked with Assembly, C, C++, Rexx, Java, C#, Lisp, Html, Javascript, CSS, Relational databases, Object databases and related technologies. He has published over 30 articles touching many of these areas in a number of print and online magazines. The primary list of articles are available at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/241. Satya has also managed to confuse O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) organizers a few times in the past to be a speaker at OSCON on a number of obscure quixotic concepts.

He continues to refine the goal of Active Intellect, Inc., based on the same quixotic concepts surrounding web based presence, computing, and personal growth. You will find him, more than often, at his site that is developed using the same "quixotic" technologies at http://www.satyakomatineni.com. You can find a bit more detailed, but perhaps a bit dated, resume here.

While closely working with Indent, inc., he was involved in a number of projects funded by Small Business Innovative Research program. One of the programs developed is an early javascript and SVG based drawing program that works like a mini-visio on the web. He has also helped Indent to optimize J2EE portals for rapid development and deployment of web sites.

Satya holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, India, 1986, and a Bachelors in electrical engineering from Andhra University, India, 1984. Although he thoroughly enjoyed the fascinating subject matter of Electrical Engineering the value at this point appears primarily nostalagic.

You can find his website at http://www.satyakomatineni.com

His happy place is a large well architected library. V.S. Krishna Memorial Library in Vizag and UNF library in Jacksonville, Florida are a couple of examples.

Where to go from here

See the right side menu for downloadable projects, reader feedback, study guides and more.

You can reach me directly at satya.komatineni at gmail.com

Comments from readers of the previous editions

"I just finished reading Pro Android 2, it is something else. I have never read an android book having, so much to bite in between two covers. Kudos to you guys."

Adeola Poroye
Department of Computer Science
University of the Western Cape

"im from brazil and i'm reading your book and loving it! Thanks for the effort, great writing!"

Eduardo Berton
Android Developer
Brazil

"Thanks! I hope that you will give some other books in Polish."

Janusz Podkoscielny 
Android Developer
http://androidstudio.eu
Poland

"I have found both your book and your website a wonderful reference as I have worked on developing Android applications and wanted to start by thanking you for your work."

Jon Ross 
Android Developer
San Diego

"By the way, I own your book. It is a very good comprehensive book for Android."

Venkata Raidu
Android Developer

Click here to see more reviews