Customer Reviews
Good but don't read at night - By: Dax, 24 Nov 2009 
This book is well written & proposes many examples. It also provides a URL where to download the examples source code from. It has only about 300 pages, too few for explaining everything. Moreover, it is a bit repetitive: is states the same concepts many times, a bit pedantic, tho. A good knowledge of Java is required.
Very disappointing - By: Lucian Piros, 16 Nov 2009 
Whatever your Android programming level is, this book is a complete waste of time & definitely doesn't worth a single penny. After reading half of the book it was very clear to me that there is no leading author for this book & nobody technically reviewed the book as a whole. Except chapter 7, referring to signing & publishing Android application, the whole part one is useless. Whole Android installation process is different right now & you better check Google web site to get latest installation steps. Not to mention that there are unnecessary & very annoying repetitions on how to use Eclipse.
Even if first part was disastrous, I did finish the book. In second part there are two chapters that are worth spending your time on: chapter 10: Building a View & chapter 13: Inter-process Communication. As for the rest....utterly disappointing. The authors even prove that they don't know what application they wrote. In some chapters they use different names for same class they putin their application, thisin addition to the fact that their application doesn't work at all.
If you receive this book as a present & you are completely bored you can read it, otherwise I would not spend a single penny on it.
Rubbish - By: Torben Hørup Nielsen, 11 Aug 2009 
Well this book does cover the basics of creating an android application but the quality of this book is below the usual high O'Reilly standard.
Android for the masses - By: MadMouse, 08 Jul 2009 The book is aimed at the beginner/intermediate Android developer.
As it can be used by the absolute beginner, it is better suited to
developers with a little foreknowledge or a mentor on the subject.
This book is well suited to a training environments as the topics have
additional information surrounding them that assistin supporting there
relevance & usein the development cycle.
The examples were well explained & easy enough to implement, I did find
that a few examples didn't work out the box but with a little common sense
and very little effort had them all working as per the book (Remember the
framework version).
PLEASE NOTE : As this book contains technical items explained from the
authors perspective some of the topic explanations seem confusing when first
read, please take the time to re-read them, as I found that once I
understood the mindset & approach of the author it was a pleasant & easy
reading from then on.
I would recommend this book to startup developers & it's material to
"Android developer course" writers (remember to get permission from the
publisher/Author).
First professional book from O'Reilly about Android - By: Ivan De Marino, 27 Jun 2009 This is definitely the first book about Android that O'Reilly published.
The previous one from O'Reilly was just "nothing".
But I guess this is normal: Android is still a new & growing technology.
