This document provides an introduction to mobile application development on Android. It discusses why developers should create mobile apps, the basics of the Android platform including its architecture and components, and the first steps to creating an Android project such as setting up the SDK and developing a simple app with a layout, button, and onclick action. It emphasizes that apps should have a decent user interface, good performance, and conserve battery life.

1. Introduction to Mobile
Application
Development on
Android
Julian Shen

2. A bird?
A plane?
Not a Super man either

3. Smart Phone

4. 4
• Make a phone call
• Surfing internet
• Manage your schedule
• .....
A smart phone can

5. 5
Who uses smart
phone?

6. Everybody could own
oneThanks to Apple and iPhone

7. So...now you may
know

8. Why should you
develop a mobile
application?
Make money

9. What’s your target
users?
Everybody
Knowing your users well

10. But, there is one more
thing you should know

11. 11
It’s a phone not a PC
• Less memory, less computing power
• Battery is its food
• Internet connection is not always on and stable
• Some operations cost user money
• Lot of hardware combination
• Different screen size
• With/without GPS
• Capacitive/Resistive/No touch screen
• ....

12. Application design
philosophy

13. 13
What is a good
mobile application?
• Decent user interface
• Better performance
• Consume less power

14. 14
A Good User
Interface
• Should be pretty but not only pretty
• Should be also
• Reasonable
• Predictable
• Responsive
• Easy to operate by fingers

15. 15
What you should
avoid
• Complex and meaningless gestures
• Meaningless animations
• Inconsistent UI behaviors
• Too many operating steps
• Hidden steps
• Long run logic in UI thread
• Block user (Progress dialog is not so good)
• Any assumption

16. 16
Performance
• Always think about the worst case
• IO costs
• Network is slow
• Long run (or busy) process consumes
battery
• Background is good but also evil

17. You don’t like to see this

19. Introduction to
Android

20. 20
Android is
• A mobile platform
• A Google’s product
• Linux + Java
• Source is available to public

21. 21
Version History
• 1.0 - Sep 2008
• 1.1 - Feb 2009
• 1.5 Cupcake - April 2009
• 1.6 Donut - Sep 2009
• 2.0/2.1 Eclair - Oct 2009 (2.0), Jan 2010
(2.1)
• 2.2 Froyo - May 2010
• 2.3(?) Gingerbread - 2010(?)

22. Architecture

23. 23
Application
Fundamentals
• By default, every application runs on its
own process
• Applications could share process
• Each process has its own JVM
• By default, each application has a
unique Linux UID
• It’s possible to share same UID for two
different application
• Every process has its own memory limit

24. 24
Application
Components
• Activities
• Services
• Broadcast receivers
• Content providers

25. What you need
before developing an
Android application?

26. JAVA

27. Eclipse

28. Android SDK and
ADT
Get it from http://www.android.com

29. SDK document
Read it online : http://www.android.com

30. What else you might
be interested?

31. Android Open Source
Check how to get it from http://source.android.com

32. 32
Why you might need
Android sources?
• Android document sucks
• Trust no one! Truth is in the sources
• Many applications could be taken as
examples

33. 33
Other way to develop
• Adobe AIR
• HTML

34. First step to Android

35. 35
Create an Android
project
• Specify project name
• Target platform
• Application properties
• Every application with UI starts from
an Activity

36. View Hierarchy

37. 37
Layout
• Create a new layout
• Add a button
• Assign an ID to this button
• Add on click action to this button
• Loading layout resource
• Accessing button from codes

38. 38
Application
Resources
• Layout
• Drawables
• Strings
• Colors
• Styles
• ...

39. 39
Run and Debug
• Create an AVD
• Run application
• Using DDMS
• Check UI hierarchy from hierarchy
viewer

40. Traceview

41. May force be with
you