1
Chapter
Introducing the Android
Computing Platform
Computing is more accessible than ever before. Handheld devices have transformed
into computing platforms. Be it a phone or a tablet, the mobile device is now so capable
of general-purpose computing that it’s becoming the real personal computer (PC). Every
traditional PC manufacturer is producing devices of various form factors based on the
Android OS. The battles between operating systems, computing platforms,
programming languages, and development frameworks are being shifted and reapplied
to mobile devices.
We are also seeing a surge in mobile programming as more and more IT applications
start to offer mobile counterparts. In this book, we’ll show you how to take advantage of
your Java skills to write programs for devices that run on Google’s Android platform
(http://developer.android.com/index.html), an open source platform for mobile and
tablet development.
NOTE: We are excited about Android because it is an advanced Java-based platform that
introduces a number of new paradigms in framework design (even with the limitations of a
mobile platform).
In this chapter, we’ll provide an overview of Android and its SDK, give a brief overview of
key packages, introduce what we are going to cover in each chapter, show you how to
take advantage of Android source code, and highlight the benefits of programming for
the Android platform.
A New Platform for a New Personal Computer
The Android platform embraces the idea of general-purpose computing for handheld
devices. It is a comprehensive platform that features a Linux-based operating system
stack for managing devices, memory, and processes. Android’s Java libraries cover
1
