Android™ Programming Unleashed

Chapter 13. Creating and Consuming Services

In This Chapter

• Moving Tasks to Background Threads

• Using the Handler Class

• Using the AsyncTask Class

• Downloading and Displaying Images from the Internet

• Consuming SOAP Services

• Creating a Service

• Creating a Bound Service

• Alarm Manager

• Sensor Manager

Performing tasks in the background increases application efficiency. One way to handle background processing is to use an Android service. A service is an application component that can perform long-running operations in the background and does not provide a user interface.

Moving Tasks to Background Threads

All Android application components such as activities, services, and broadcast receivers run in the main application thread. That ...