Nexus One: Where is Android at?
With the announcement of the new GooglePhone, which promises to be the best Android device yet and by all early reports at least comparable with the iPhone 3GS, it seems appropriate to stop to take a look around to see where Android is at. We start with the breakdown of Android Platform distribution, based on access to the Android Market. Android versions (Source: http://developer.android.com) more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 4: Even More Views
In this final installation of the Android Views series of articles, we shall continue our exploration of another category of views - Menu views, and some additional cool views. The views discussed include: Context Menu Options Menu AnalogClock DigitalClock WebView more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 3: More Views
In the previous article, you saw the various basic views such as the TextView, EditText, Button, and how you can use them in your Android applications. In this article, we shall continue our exploration of another three categories of views - Picker views, List views, and Display views. The views discussed include: TimePicker view DatePicker view ListView view Spinner view Gallery view ImageView ImageSwitcher view GridView view more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 2: Views
In the previous article on Android UI you saw the components that make up the UI of an Android application. The basic unit of the Android UI is the View. A View represents a widget that has an appearance on the screen. In this article (and the next two), you will learn about the various common views that you would likely use in your journey of Android development. In particular, I have categorized the views in this series into the following group: Basic Views - commonly-used views such as TextView, EditText, and Button views more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 1: Layouts
So far in my previous few articles on Android I have focused on showing you how to get things done in Android without really spending too much time discussing the visual aspect of Android application development - User Interface design. In this article, and the next, I will walk you through the various elements that make up the UI of an Android application. In this first part of the article, I will discuss the various layouts available in Android to position the various widgets on your screen. more...
Using Google Maps in Android
Google Maps is one of the many applications bundled with the Android platform. In addition to simply using the Maps application, you can also embed it into your own applications and make it do some very cool things. In this article, I will show you how to use Google Maps in your Android applications and how to programmatically perform the following: Change the views of Google Maps Obtain the latitude and longitude of locations in Google Maps Perform geocoding and reverse geocoding Add markers to Google Maps more...
SMS Messaging in Android
It would be safe to say that nearly every mobile phone sold in the past decade has SMS messaging capabilities. In fact, SMS messaging is one great killer application for the mobile phone and it has created a steady revenue stream for mobile operators. Understanding how to use SMS messaging in your application can provide you with many ideas to create the next killer application. more...
Getting Started with Android Development
Unless you have been hiding in the caves for the past couple of months, by now you must have heard of the mobile platform from Google that everyone is talking about. Yes, that's right, I am talking about Android. Android is an open source mobile operating system that is based on the Linux kernel. Using Android, device manufacturers can customize the OS to suit their particular hardware design, thereby allowing them to innovate without limitations. more...
The Google Phone Cometh (so what)?
Last week saw the announcement of the first Android based device, the HTC Dream better known now as the T-Mobile G1. Despite the fact that this phone is based on on Open Source platform, the details as they have been released, make it feel very much like any other smartphone that Joe Consumer can go purchase from his operator. It's locked to T-Mobile USA at launch and will find its way into the UK in November before it conquers the world in 2009. Now the real question: So what? more...
