All applications are created equal

All applications are created equal
“Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications
and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access
to  a  phone's  capabilities  providing  users  with  a  broad  spectrum  of
applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform,
users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can
swap out the phone's  home screen, the style of the dialer, or  any of
the  applications.  They  can  even  instruct  their  phones  to  use  their
favorite  photo  viewing  application  to  handle  the  viewing  of  all
photos.”
Once again this is all true. Developers can 100% customize their AndroidDevice. The Android System Communication is based on so called Intents,
which  are  more  or  less  just  a  String  (with  some  data  attached)  which
defines an action that needs to be handled. An example for this is:
”android.provider.Telephony.SMS_RECEIVED”
One  can  simply  listen  on  that  Intent  by  writing  about  5  lines  of
definitions. The system would then recognize that there is more than one
application that wants to handle that Intent and ask the user to choose
which one he or she would like to handle the Intent.
Breaking down application boundaries
“Android breaks down the barriers to building new and innovative
applications. For example, a developer can combine information from
the web with data on an individual's mobile phone - such as the user's
contacts, calendar, or geographic location - to provide a more relevant
user experience. With Android, a developer could build an application
that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted
when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect.”
Fast & easy application development
“Android provides access to a wide range of useful libraries and tools
that can be used to build rich applications. For example, Android
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enables developers to obtain the location of the device, and allows
devices to communicate with one another enabling rich peer-to-peer
social applications. In addition, Android includes a full set of tools that
have been built from the ground up alongside the platform providing
developers with high productivity and deep insight into their
applications.”
Since  the  Web  2.0  revolution,  making  content  rich  applications  within
minutes is no more illusion. Android has brought developing to unknown
speeds. Let me provide an example:
Someday  I  stumbled  over  the  Buzzword  ‘DrivingDirections’  within  the
Android-Documentation.
Thought – done.
Picture 2 Google DrivingDirections implementation in Android
The  development  process  of  the  application  in  the  picture  above  took
about 1½ hours! (Including the simple  user  interface and  all images you
see).  Could  one  create  such  a  sophisticated  application  on  any  other
mobile-platform? – No.
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Additionally  this  application  could  be  enriched  with  the  current  GPSposition of the device within a handful of code-lines.
Google emphasizes Androids power of providing location-based-services.
Google Maps are so neat within Android as if it was just developed for
Android. One can integrate a fully zoom and drag enabled map by adding
just  3(!)  characters  in  the  Java-Code of  the  Android-Default-Application
and 3 lines of XML-Code.
Other nice features that are easy to use with Android are Animations and
media-playback.  Since  version  m5,  the  Android  SDK  contains  functions
for straight and reverse GeoCoding  and in addition to mp3, playback of:
ogg-Vorbis, MIDI and a bunch of other formats

Foreword / How to read this doc

Foreword / How to read this doc

This document was written for developers who have worked with Java™ 

before and want  to  start  developing for  the Android Platform. I tried to 

make  this  as  much  “hands  on”  as  possible,  placing  example  codes

everywhere  it  fit.  Also  I  tried  to  insert  as  many  picture  as  possible, 

because they liven up the learning process and relax the reader’s eyes.

But  unfortunately    coding  is  not  everything;  one  has  to  learn  about 

some  basic  facts  of  the  Android  Platform  to  fully  understand.  That  is 

what is described on the first  ~XXX  pages. It is not necessary to read all 

those describing pages, but it is preferable. You could decide to treat it as 

a kind of  reference. What you would read there is also explained when it 

occurs during the “hands on”-process.  So you could directly start at Hello 

World – The Android Way.

All  codes  you  see  in  this  document  (the  whole  workspace)  will  be 

available on:

http://andbook.anddev.org/sources/