Android Apps With Eclipse by Onur Cinar

I have been developing in C++, Java, C# and iOS for years and have taught myself most of these skills using good development books. While I agree with other reviewers that Android Apps with Eclipse is very well written, it is not an outstanding development book in my view. The title lead me to believe that working through this book will enable me to develop Android Apps using Eclipse (with Java, which is not explicitly stated in the title but is a fair assumptions given Java’s predominant role in Android application development).

After I had worked myself through about 180 pages (more than 50% of the book), I had completed exactly one example application. The first 150 pages are largely dedicated to Eclipse with a brief primer on Android. Excited to be building upon my first Android App, I discovered that the next chapter covers Android Native Development on a stunning 50(!!) pages, a topic which should be covered in such depth only in a book for advanced Android Development. The remaining chapters 8-10 cover a little more Java development before the author moves on to scripting, HTML and JavaScript.

Bottom-line: If you are looking for a cross section of the different technologies you can use with Eclipse to develop for Android, this is your book. However, if you are looking to have a solid introduction to developing Android Apps with Java, I suggest you look for other titles!

“Android Apps with Eclipse” fills a very necessary niche in the Android developers library. Too many of the previous Android programming books swept by the start-up process and deluged the programmer with Android internals and failed to insure that the most important step was never completed. Although Intellij and MotoDev have there adherents, Eclipse is the primary introductory tool for Android development and following the instructions of these older references insures that your Eclipse will never work with Android. The problem is that there are over a dozen versions of Eclipse, and all but two of them are completely unsuited to work with Android. This book was the first Android reference to note that Classic and Eclipse for Java Developers(my research) should be the focus for Android development. I have installed three other Eclipse candidates and all of them have failed to attach to the Android Tools download despite repeated attempts. This manual provides 110 pages of Eclipse general training and 20 pages in chapter 5 specifically how to attach the Android Development Tools to Eclipse. I am so relieved that I won’t have to spend countless hours trying to understand why Eclipse won’t work with Android. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, the book takes 150 pages of its 332 page length to get started on a project. Its a pretty good project since it involves playing movies and we all like the slick effect of running media. But, it’s about the only project in the whole book. However, there is a very bright side to this singular project. I found that chapters 7 and 8 were devoted to applying the Android NDK to the movie player. This is a valuable and fairly detailed exploration of applying professional coding to Eclipse projects. The NDK is a highly valuable support tool that can give an overloaded project the performance needed to take it to the next level. There are hints around the internet that indicate that cell phones are not considered powerful enough to do serious computing applications. Being able to apply the NDK to give your new design up to a 10X performance boost could raise its competence to the level that draws the attention needed to make a succesful business out of it. And mobile GPU computations are just the place to find hidden abilities in your phone or tablet.

So, although I wanted this book to keep climbing into even higher levels of Android application design, it was cut short by the book’s short length. On final reflection though, I felt very satisfied that it had delivered the best introduction on how to get the most out of using Eclipse as a development tool and had delivered the best introduction on how to use the mysterious NDK that I was forced to admit that it deserved a full five stars.

I wish that this book had been available a year ago when I started working with Android. It could have saved me dozens of hours of frustration and I would be a better Android programmer if it had been published then. However, its here now and I have an automobile engine analysis application that I can’t wait to finish using Eclipse.and the Android NDK. Happy computing.

Starts out with Android intro and overview, then has two chapters on native programming and two chapters on scripting layer, comprising 40% of the book for these topics, so if that’s your interest then this is the book; otherwise, look for a more recent treatment.

The author writes with a straight forward, easy to ingest style that makes this book a joy to pick up and difficult to put down. The book gives a comprehensive overview of all things android, going into the details of the NDK and offering insight on scripting using SL4A. I am a seasoned Java developer with over 14 years of professional experience and I found the book incredibly helpful as I transition from several years of iOS development back into Java and Android.