Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

As the year 2019 drew to a close, Android ran on 51.8 percent of all smartphones in the United States and on 85 percent of all smartphones worldwide.^1,2 The Google Play Store had 2.57 million apps compared with only 1.84 million in Apple's App Store.³

Today, Android is everywhere, and experts predict that Android will dominate the global smartphone market for years to come.⁴ So, if you read this book in a public place (on a commuter train, at the beach, on the dance floor at the Coyote Ugly saloon), you can read proudly, with a chip on your shoulder and with your chest held high. Android is hot stuff, and you’re cool because you’re reading about it.

How to Use This Book

You can attack this book in either of two ways. You can go cover to cover, or you can poke around from one chapter to another. You can even do both (start at the beginning and then jump to a section that particularly interests you). In this book, the basic topics come first, and the more involved topics follow the basics. You may already be comfortable with some basics, or you may have specific goals that don’t require you to know about certain topics.

The best advice is as follows:

• If you already know something, don’t bother reading about it.
• If you’re curious, don’t be afraid to skip ahead. You can always sneak a peek at an earlier chapter if you really need to do so.

Conventions Used in This Book

Almost every technical book starts with a little typeface legend, and this book is no exception. ...