I got a review copy of this book from Apress. Here is the review.
This is a book for programmers who have a basic knowledge of Java and want to get an introduction to the elements of Android programming. The book should be useful for both professionals and hobbyists. It is easy to read and well structured, and not too extensive, which makes it comprehensible. The 350 pages do a good job at covering a fair amount of the Android API. One area that is not covered is development tools, here the book refers to the Android web site (www.android.com). Setting up a development environment for Android can be tricky if you are new to programming, so this is an area where less experienced readers are left on their own.
The book covers Android 1.5, which is an old version by now. I however found the text and the code examples useful also for Android 2.1 development. The back inside cover mentions that there is a companion eBook available. An updated eBook would be of great added value, but it should be provided for free to customers who have purchased the book, not at additional cost as seems to currently be the case.
The style of writing is clear and the text is easy to read. The book is structured into several short chapters, where each chapter covers an aspect of Android development and the related parts of the API. Each chapter begins with an introduction that explains the topics covered in the chapter. Then follows a complete, runnable, and often short and concise code example that illustrates the chapter topic. This makes the book useful as a cookbook.
One not-so-nice aspect of the text is the use of supposedly funny section titles. I find titles like “Mother, May I”, “Halt! Who Goes There?”, ”When IPC Attacks!”, and “Seeing Pestering in Action”, to be quite irritating and distracting. The subject is interesting on its own merits, and the silly section titles actually make it harder to find what you are looking for in the book. There may, however, be readers who will find the titles entertaining. Another less good aspect of the book is the code style used, with no blanks between the parts of an expression. The first chapters use the correctly spaced Java-code style, but the majority of the chapters do not, and this is bad since it can establish bad coding practices among readers (especially beginners).
It is quite common for programming books to list classes and methods in the APIs covered, something which I find superfluous since the most current API documentation is available online. This book does not provide API listings, which is positive because it makes the text more coherent and flowing. It also saves pages, and makes room for more code examples and explanatory texts, which are added values compared to the online API documentation, and a reason for buying a book.
For me, the major value of the book has been as a cookbook of code examples. The examples in the book are often short, clear, useful, and on the spot on what you want to do.
Source : http://divineprogrammer.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-review-beginning-android.html
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