The first thing that hits you when you flip through the pages of this book is the color. The example screens, diagrams and tables really stand out. It's a delight to read a full color book and I'm thinking, why have I never come across more full color IT books?
The target audience are developers with a Java programming background who want to start Android development. And the book fulfills this promise very well.
The first couple of chapters are introductory, but aren't a drag to read (although the concepts of Activities, Intents and the manifest file are better explained in a book like "Hello, Android!" from the Pragmatic Programmers)
A second thing which really stuck out and is well worth mentioning are the "Did you know", "Watch out!" and "By the way" text boxes which really showed the authors have real programming experience with Android. Those little text boxes sometimes really contained little gems of information. These alone are worth reading every page of this book since you don't want to miss out on these.
The chapters are called "Hour 1..." and "Hour 2..." and are really targeted to be digested in an hour, max. I sometimes simply read a chapter in half an hour, without working out the examples in the development environment. I know, maybe not the way to go to really learn programming Android very well, but considering the time (we all have so little of) just reading a quick chapter was fulfilling for me anyway ;-)
Every chapter concludes with a Q&A section which was a bit tedious. The questions were very simple and the answers were right below the questions, so I skipped those sections further down the book. Apart from the Q&A section each chapter also included some exercises, which really are a challenge, because no 'answer' is given there. Just a task. I liked those!
A lot of Android books (or programming books in general) use a sample application which is enhanced throughout the whole book. This book is no different. However, where other books might focus on forms and list this book's example is a nice trivia game, which makes use of the camera, the network, social features and many other cool Android framework features.
The way the example program is set up and worked out is really the way you (or I in this case) would start fiddling around with Android. At some point it states: "You can copy the QuizSplashActivity five more times..." A very pragmatic approach, and again something programmers do daily. Maybe not the most elegant suggestion, but if you want to achieve something fast (learning Android) that's just the way I like.
Before you dive into a new chapter, a concept or screen layout a nice diagram is often presented first, which really helps in getting your brain in design / conceptual 'mode' (so to speak).
The majority of the Android concepts are covered really well. Shared preferences, context- and normal menus, dialogs, views, view switchers, image media, location based services, progress bars, communicating with a network server, creating home screen app widgets, and many more. Also 'development' activities like testing and developing for different devices and 'deployment' activities like placing your app in the Android market are present in the book.
The majority of the chapters have sample code, which you can download from a website. The examples all worked in my case. No problems there.
The author's are active bloggers on mobile application development and Android development in particular. If you don't buy the book you should definitely check out their blog (at [...]) and the mobile tuts website ([...]), with many of their contributions.
Advanced topics like OpenGL 2D/3D, the SQLite database, content providers and the various sensors, etc. are each described in half to a full page of text, but not more. I would have wanted to see a chapter on SQLite database and one on content providers though, since these are very common in Android apps, even for beginners.
Conclusion: I really liked the full color pages, the text boxes with invaluable information from real programmers and the digestibility of the chapters a real plus. Maybe some advanced features (like SQLite databases and content providers) could have been described in their own chapter, but then again, the target audience is the beginning Android developer. The book is very complete in the sense that it describes the whole process of setting up your dev environment, programming your app, testing it and deploying it on the Android market. I would really recommend this book for beginning Android developers. If you already read one or two Android books and consider yourself a mid-level to seasoned Android programmer don't buy the book. Maybe skim the pages and read the "Watch out!", "By the way" and "Did you know" text boxes ;-)
