Slides from Bathcamp Brief intro to Android for the Bathcamp meetup group

1. Android An intro to the open platform!

2. Who?
 Kieran Gutteridge
 @kgutteridge
 Developing for mobile devices since 2002

3. Android
 Open handset alliance
 http://developer.android.com
 Based on Linux 2.6
 Android allows Java developers far lower access to
the phone than was possible in J2ME, ie 0870

4. Open Handset Alliance

5. Why Android?
Cost
Android
Low
iPhone
J2ME
High Wimo
Symbian
Difficult Easy

6. Appstores
 Android app market
– Self certification, this works on the internet!
– No approvals
– Piracy is a problem as with others
– Payments not rolled out across all countries
 Alternatives
– Self distribution
– other app stores

7. Penetration of versions
 http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/
platform-versions.html

8. Architecture

9. Android Code
• Highly optimized VM, compiled byte is optimized for
mobile devices
• End result is NOT the same byte code as Java,
o dx in the sdk takes compiled Java class files and
converts them into .dex
• No JIT until Froyo 2.2
• Built with security and performances (battery life) in
mind

10. Tools
• SDK
o Available at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
• Eclipse
o 3.3(Europa) or 3.4 (Ganymede)
• Eclipse Plugin
o XP,Vista, Linux, x86 Mac 10.4.8 or later
o http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html
• Leave the emulator running!
o Exact opposite to J2ME and BREW, your app will be deployed
each subsequent run or debug

11. What makes an app
 APK file
 One of more activities (can be a headless)
 AndroidManifest.xml
 Views think Swing/LWUIT
 Layouts xml based editor
 What makes Android great
 intents
 contentproviders
 notifcations

12. Defaults - what defaults

13. Top tips
 Async task

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html
 Draw 9 Patch
 http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/draw9patch.html
 Toast
 http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Toast.html
 Webkit
 http://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/package-summary.html

14. Optimisation
• Creation of Objects
• Strings are objects!
• Use of static and final
• Getters and setters
• Field lookups in larger loops
• Fixed point rather than floats
• Multi Dimensional Arrays

15. Questions