This is a presentation that I gave at Google Developer Group Oxford to introduce people to Android development and Android Studio IDE, which is used to build Android apps. This presentation gives a brief overview of the platform and fundamentals of the app and what developer tools are available. PS: Some slides do not have any text accompanying it. That is either because it wasn't relevant or because the text would've been too long to put on the corresponding slide.

1. INTRODUCTION TO
ANDROID AND ANDROID
STUDIO
Suyash Srijan

2. ABOUT THE SPEAKER
• Computer science student at Oxford Brookes
• A kickass Android developer with nearly 6 years of experience
• Experience with building ROMs and porting Android to different devices
• Experience with other platforms (iOS, Windows, Blackberry) and Wearables (Pebble & Android Wear)
• Overall a very cool guy
@suyashsrijan
fb.com/suyashsrijan
github.com/theblixguy

3. WHAT WILL WE LEARN TODAY
• What is Android
• Why develop for Android
• Android platform overview
• Android app overview
• Android app lifecycle
• Android app fundamentals (activities, intents, etc)
• Design
• Device compatibility
• Distribution
• What we need to get started with Android development
• Android Studio and development tools

4. WHAT IS

5. Android is the world’s most popular and dominant mobile operating
system. It is based on Linux kernel 3.4/3.10 (depending on device) and is
open-source (with proprietary bits). It runs on a wide variety of hardware,
including smartphones, smart watches, cars, televisions, digital cameras,
game consoles and more. It was founded by Andy Rubin and three
others in October 2003 and got acquired by Google in August 2005.

6. WHY DEVELOP FOR

7. is gigantic
• Over 1B users
• Over 1.5M activations per day
• Over 200M smartphones running Android sold annually
• Over 1.43M apps available
• Over 76% smartphone operating system market share

8. is freedom
• Thousands of third party libraries available
• Free SDK, IDE and emulator
• No restrictions; access anything*
• Faster access to new form factors and hardware
• Distribute your app anywhere (Playstore, Amazon Appstore, …)
* well, not anything, but you get the point

9. PLATFORM OVERVIEW

11. APP OVERVIEW

12. • Java: Java class files containing app logic
• Res: Different resource files
• Anim: Animation resource files
• Drawable: Images
• Drawable-Xdpi: Images depending on screen density
• Layout: App layout files
• Menu: Layout menu files
• Values: Value files (strings, colors, arrays, etc)
• Values-vX: Value files depending on API level
• Values-Xdp: Value files depending on screen density
• XML: XML files (duh)
• AndroidManifest.xml: App metadata file
• build.gradle: Build related settings

14. APP LIFECYCLE

16. APP FUNDAMENTALS

17. ACTIVITY

18. • A window/interface which a user can interact with
• Every app has at least one activity
• Activities can be full-screen, floating or embedded
inside another activity
startActivity(new Intent(this, newActivity.class));

19. FRAGMENTS

20. • A piece of user interface that is meant to be reused
• Adds modularity to your app and makes dynamic UI
design easy
• It has its own layout, behavior and lifecycle callbacks,
but it killed/stop if the activity is too
getFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(andr
oid.R.id.content, new MyFragment()).commit();

21. INTENTS

22. • An intent is an abstract description of an operation to
be performed. Think of it as an “intention” to do
something
• Intents can be used to start activities, services or send
a broadcast
• Intents are of two types – Explicit (when you know
what exactly you want to do), and Implicit (when
you’re not sure what you want to do)
Intent viewAmazon = new
Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
Uri.parse(“http://www.amazon.com”));
startActivity(viewAmazon);

23. SERVICES

24. • A service is a long running
operation in the background
• There are two types of services
in Android – Bounded (which
runs as long as components
which bind to it run) and
Unbounded (which runs
indefinitely) but a service can
also be both
• Services run on the main thread
of the application by default
startService(new Intent(this,
myService.class));

25. BROADCAST RECIEVERS

26. App/Service
System sends a
broadcast
Battery level
changes
SMS received
Photo captured
• A broadcast is a system or
app event that can be
“broadcasted” so other
apps/services can listen for it
• Broadcasts are handled by
a BroadcastReceiver, which
is a component that allows
you to listen for broadcasts
• A BroadcastReceiver can be
implemented in
AndroidManifest.xml, or
dynamically by calling
registerReceiver(), or both
• An app’s/services’s
BroadcastReceiver is never
called if the app/service
hasn’t been explicitly started
by the user

27. CONTENT PROVIDERS/RESOLVERS

28. App
Database
Insert
Update Delete
Fetch
• A content provider allows you
to store data in your app in a
structured way, similar to a
relational database like SQL, for
the purpose of providing it to
other apps. Example usage:
Contacts app, SMS app, etc
• A content resolver allows you
to get data from a content
provider or manipulate its data
(modify, delete, update, etc)
• You cannot request to read
data from a content provider
at runtime, it has to be
declared in
AndroidManifest.xml

29. ANDROIDMANIFEST.XML

31. LAYOUTS

32. • A layout defines the visual structure for a user
interface, such as the UI for an activity or app widget
• Layouts can be defined both in XML or
programmatically using View and ViewGroup objects
• There are 5 different types of Layouts in Android:
LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, FrameLayout,
TableLayout and AbsoluteLayout

33. DESIGN

35. DEVICE COMPATIBILITY

36. Android is designed to run on many different types of devices, from phones to tablets
and televisions. As a developer, the range of devices provides a huge potential
audience for your app. In order for your app to be successful on all these devices, it
should tolerate some feature variability and provide a flexible user interface that
adapts to different screen configurations. To facilitate your effort toward that goal,
Android provides a dynamic app framework in which you can provide configuration-
specific app resources in static files (such as different XML layouts for different screen
sizes). Android then loads the appropriate resources based on the current device
configuration. So with some forethought to your app design and some additional app
resources, you can publish a single application package (APK) that provides an
optimized user experience on a variety of devices. If necessary, however, you can
specify your app's feature requirements and control which types of devices can install
your app from Google Play Store.

38. DISTRIBUTION

40. WHAT DO I NEED TO BUILD AN
APP?

41. JAVA PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE & XML
docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/

42. ANDROID SDK & SDK TOOLS
developer.android.com/sdk

43. ANDROID STUDIO
tools.android.com/download/studio

44. AND OF COURSE…

46. MORE ON ANDROID STUDIO

48. ADB

49. • Connect to an Android device or emulator
• Read logcat
• Install, reinstall or uninstall apps
• Send/retrieve files to/from device storage
• Forward ports
• Record screen or take screenshots
• Reboot your phone into boot loader or recovery
mode
• Take backups or restore them
• Execute shell commands

50. DEVICE MONITOR

52. LOGCAT

54. SDK MANAGER

56. WORKFLOW

58. THERE’S STILL A LOT TO COVER…
NDK, Support Library, Google services APIs, Monetization, etc.

59. THANK YOU

60. PLEASE FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS
FOR INFORMATION ON UPCOMING EVENTS, TALKS
AND MORE
@gdgoxford
fb.com/gdgoxford
plus.google.com/+GdgoxfordUkGoogleDevelopers/